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CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


STUDIES IN THEOLOGY 


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A Critical Introduction to the New Testament 
By ArTHUR SAMUEL PEAKE, D.D. 
Faith and its Psychology 
By the Rev. Wirt1aM R. INGE, D.D. 
Philosophy and Religion 
By the Rev. Hastincs RAsapALt, D.Litt. (Oxon), 
D.C.L. (Durham), F.B.A. 
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By the Rev. JAmEs Orr, D.D. 
Christianity and Social Questions 
By the Rev. Witt1am CunNINGHAM, D.D., F.B.A. 
Christian Thought to the Reformation 
By Hersert B. Workman, D.Litt. 
Protestant Thought Before Kant 
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An Outline of the History of Christian Thought 
Since Kant 
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By Witt1aAm ApaAms Brown, Ph.D.. D.D. 


The Theology of the Gospels 
By the Rev. James Morratt, D.D., D.Litt. 
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By ALEXANDER SouTER, D.Litt. 


A Critical Introduction to the Old Testament 
By the Rev. GEoRGE BucHANAN Gray, D.D., D.Litt. 


A Handbook of Christian Apologetics 

By ALFRED ERNEST GARVIE, M.A., D.D. 
Gospel Origins 

By the Rev. WitLt1AM West Hotpswortu, M.A. 


The Religious Ideas of the Old Testament 
By H. WHEELER Rosinson, M.A. 


Christianity and Sin. 
By Rosert MAcKINnTosH, D.D. 


Christianity and Ethics 
By ARrcHIBALD B. D. ALEXANDER, M.A., D.D. 


CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


A Handbook of Christian Ethics 


BY 


ARCHIBALD B. D. ALEXANDER, M.A., D.D. 


AUTHOR OF ‘A SHORT HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY,’ 
‘THE ETHICS OF ST. PAUL,’ ETC. 


NEW YORK 
CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS 
1914 


y 


All rights 


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PREFACE 


» THE object of this volume is to present a brief but compre- 
hensive view of the Christian conception of the moral life. 
. In order to conform with the requirements of the series to 
which the volume belongs, the writer has found the task of 
compression one of almost insurmountable difficulty ; and 
_, some topics, only less important than those dealt with, have 
»» been necessarily omitted. The book claims to be, as its 
~! title indicates, simply a handbook or introduction to 
Christian Ethics. It deals with principles rather than 
details, and suggests lines of thought instead of attempting 
an exhaustive treatment of the subject. At the same time, 
in the author’s opinion, no really vital question has been 
overlooked. The treatise is intended primarily for students, 
but it is hoped that it may prove serviceable to those who 
desire a succinct account of the moral and social problems 
of the present day. 
A fairly full bibliography has been added, which, along 
’~ with the references to authorities in the body of the work, 
~ may be helpful to those who wish to prosecute the study- 
For the convenience of readers the book has been divided 
into four sections, entitled, Postulates, Personality, Char- 
acter, and Conduct; and a detailed synopsis of contents 
has been supplied. 
To the Rev. W. R. Thomson, B.D. of Bellshill, Scotland, 
- who read the chapters in type, and generally put at his 
© disposal much valuable suggestion, the author would record 
his most sincere thanks. 


ILO 
2 PD Gad Bes 


Be 
Maan sé 
AA AM 


, iy 
Vig Ay Ss 
“) is 





CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTION 
PAGE 
A PLEA FOR THE Stuby oF CHRISTIAN Eruics. é 3 1 
SECTION A—POSTULATES 
CHAPTER I 
THE NATURE AND Scope or Eruics . 5 F “ 9 


I, General Definition. 
II. Distinctive Features—1. Ideal ; 2. Norm; 3. Will. 
III. Is Ethics a Science? . 
IV. Relation to—1l. Logic; 2. Aisthetics ; 3. Politics. 
VY. Dependence upon—l. Metaphysics ; 2. Psychology. 


CHAPTER II 


Toe PostTuLaTEs OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS , ; : 4 22 


I. Philosophical Ethics. 
Il. Dogmatics. 
III, Theological Presuppositions— 
1, Christian Idea of God. 
2. Christian Doctrine of Sin, 
3. Human Responsibility, 
IV. Authority and Method. 


CHAPTER III 
ErHicaAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST  . ‘ : : r 35 


I, In Greece and Rome—Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Stoics. 
Stoicism and St. Paul. 
II. In Israel—1. Law ; 2. Prophecy; 3. Poetry. 


Preparatory Character of pre-Christian Morality. 
vii 


viii CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


SECTION B—PERSONALITY 


CHAPTER IV 


PAGE 
THe EsTiMATE or Man i - - i ‘ ; 55 


I, Conflicting Views of Human Nature— 
1. Man by nature Morally Good. 
2. Man by nature Totally Depraved. 
3. The Christian View. 

II, Examination of Man’s Psychical Nature— 
1. The Unity of the Soul. 
2. The Divine in Man. 
3. The Physical and Mental Life, 

III. Appeal of Christianity to the Mind. 


CHAPTER V 


Tae WiTNESS OF CONSCIENCE . , ‘ ; ‘ 68 


I, Treatment of Conscience— 

1. In Greek Poetry and Philosophy. 
2. In Old ‘Testament. 
3. In New Testament. 

Il. Nature and Origin of Conscience— 
1. Intuitionalism. 
2. Evolutionalism. 

III. Validity of Conscience— 
1. The Christian View. 
2. The Moral Imperatives. 
3. The Permanence of Conscience, 


CHAPTER VI 


‘Toe MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ . 4 i ; j fs 82 


Is Man free to choose the Good ? 
Creative Power of Volition. 
Aspects of Problem raised. 
I. Scientific— 
Man and Physical Necessity. 
II. Psychological— 
Determinism and Indeterminism, 
Criticism of James and Bergson. 
Spontaneity and Necessity. ; 
III. Theological— 
Divine Sovereignty and Human Freedom, 
Jesus and Paul—Challenge to the Will. 
Freedom—a Gift and a Task. 


CONTENTS ix 


SECTION C—CHARACTER 


CHAPTER VII 


PAGE 
Mopern THEORIES oF LIFE Te LP AOE SP gi Rio 99 
I, Naturalistic Tendency— 
1. Materialistic— 
(1) Idyllic or Poetic— Rousseau, 
(2) Philosophic—Feuerbach. 
(3) Scientific—Haeckel. 
2. Utilitarian—Hobbes, Bentham, Mill. 
3. Evolutionary—Spencer. 
4. Socialistic—Marx, Engels. 
5. Individualistic— 
(1) Aistheticism—Goethe, Schiller. 
(2) Subjectivism— 
(a) Pessimism—Schopenhauer, 
(6) Optimism—Nietzsche. 
II, Idealistic Tendency— 
1. Kant—Categorical Imperative. 
2. Fichte and Hegel—Idea of Personality, 
3. James—Pragmatism. 
4. Bergson—Vitalism. 
5. Eucken-—Activism. 
CHAPTER VIII 
Tae Curistian IDEAL ‘ : ‘ : : ° hae eA 


Life, as the highest Good. 
I, Life, in its Individual Aspect— 
1. Its Intensity. 
2. Its Expansion. 
3. ‘ Eternal Life.’ 
II. Life, in its Social Aspect— 
1, ‘The Kingdom of God’— 
Eschatological Interpretation, 
Untenableness of Jnterimsethik, 
2. Christ’s View of Kingdom— 
(1) A Present Reality—a Gift. 
(2) A Gradual Development—a Task, 
(3) A Future Consummation—a Hope. 
III. Life, in its Godward Aspect— 
1. Holiness. 
2. Righteousness, 
3. Love. 


x CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


CHAPTER IX 
PAGE 


STANDARD AND MOorivE : ; A ; : é ae 


Christ as Example— 
1, Portrayal by Synoptists— 
(1) Artlessness of Disciples, 
(2) Naturalness of Jesus. 
2. Impression of Power— 
(1) Power of Loyalty to Calling. 
(2) Power of Holiness. 
(3) Power of Sympathy. 
3. Value of Jesus’ Example for Present Life— 
Misconception of Phrase ‘ Imitation of Christ,’ 
II. The Christian Motive— 
1. Analysis of Springs of Conduet— 
(1) Divine Forgiveness, 
(2) Fatherhood of God. 
(3) Sense of Voéation. 
(4) Brevity of Life. 
(5) Idea of Immortality. 
2. Question as to Purity of Motive— 
(1) Charge of Asceticism. 
(2) Charge of Hedonism, 
8. Doctrine of Rewards— 
(1) In Philosophy. 
(2) In Christianity—(a) Jesus ; (b) Paul. 


CHAPTER X 
Tar Dynamic or THE New LIFE a ‘ 4 ° - 164 


I. Divine Power— 

Operative through Christ’s 

1. Incarnation and Life. 

2. Death and Sacrifice. 

3. Resurrection and Indwelling Presence. 

II. Human Response— 

1. Repentance— 
(1) Contrition—Confession—Resolution. 
(2) Question of ‘Sudden Conversion,’ 
(3) ‘Twice Born’ or ‘Once Born.’ 

2. Faith— 
(1) In Ordinary Life. 
(2) In Teaching of Jesus. 
(3) The Pauline Doctrine, 

8. Obedience— ; 
(1) Active Appropriation of Grace. 
(2) Determination of Whole Personality, 
(3) Graduai Assimilation. 


CONTENTS xi 


SECTION D—CONDUCT 
CHAPTER XI 


PAGB 


VIRTUES AND VIRTUE . Pi Loe 


Definition of Virtue. 

I. The Natural Basis of the Virtues— 
‘The Cardinal Virtues.’ 

II, The Christian Transformation of the Virtues— 
1, The New Testament Account. 
2. Cardinal Virtues, Elements of Christian Character, 
3. Place of Passive Virtues in Life, 

III. The Unification of the Virtues— 

1. Unity in Relation to God. 
2. Love, Spring of all Virtues. 
3. ‘ Theological Virtues,’ Aspects of Love. 


CHAPTER XII 


THe Reaum oF Doty . - 199 


e e s e e 6 
I. Aspects of Duty— 
1. Duty and Vocation. 
2. Conflict of Duties— 
(1) Competing Obligations. 
(2) ‘Counsels of Perfection,’ 
(3) Indifferent Acts. 
8. Rights and Duties— 
(1) Claim of ‘ Natural Rights.’ 
(2) Based on Worth of Individual. 
(3) Christian Idea of Liberty. 
II, Spheres of Duty— 
1. Duties in Relation to Self— 
(1) Self-Respect. 
(2) Self- Preservation, 
(3) Self-Development— 
Self-regarding Duties not prominent in Scripture. 
Self-Realisation through Self-Sacrifice. 
2. Duties in Relation to Others— 
(1) Regard for Man: Brotherly Love— 
(a) Justice. 
(6) Veracity. 
(c) Judgment. 
(2) Service— 
(a) Sympathy. 
(6) Beneficence, 
(c) Forgiveness, 
(8) Example and Influence. 


xii CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 
PAGE 
3. Duties in Relation to God— 
(1) Recognition. 
(2) Obedience — Passive and Active. 
(3) Worship—Reverence, Prayer, Thanksgiving. 


CHAPTER XIII 
SocraL InstiTuTIoNs . AB Cie » \y Mes tts ay ela ee eee 
I, The Family— 
1. Origin and Evolution of Family. 
2. Christian view— 
(1) Christ’s Teaching on Marriage, 
(2) State Regulation and Eugenics, 
(3) Tendencies to Disparagement. 
3. Family Relationships— 
(1) Parents and Children. 
(2) Woman’s Place and Rights, 
(3) Child Life and Education, 
II, The State— 
1. Basis of Authority— 
Tolstoy and Anarchism, 
‘Social Contract.’ 
2. State, in New Testament, 
3. Modern Conceptions— 
Views of Augustine and Hegel, 
(1) Duty of State to Citizens. 
(2) Duty of Citizens to State. 
(3) The Democratic Movement— 
Reciprocity of Service and Sense of Brotherhood, 
III. The Church— 
1. Relation of Church and State. 
2. Purpose and Ideal of Church— 
(1) Worship and Edification. 
(2) Witness to Christ. 
(3) Evangelisation of Mankind. 
3. The Church and the Social Problem— 
(1) Christ’s Teaching as to Industry and Wealth, 
(2) Attitude of Early Church to Society. 
(3) Of Roman and Reformed Churches. 
4, Duty of Christianity to the World— 
The Missionary Imperative and Opportunity. 


CHAPTER XIV 
ConcLUSION—THE PERMANENCE OF CHRISTIAN Etuics . 245 
BIBLIOGRAPHY . : ; : ; : : : . 248 


INDEX . A ) A . ‘ : : $ A fo SEs 


CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


INTRODUCTION 
A PLEA FOR THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 


Ir, as Matthew Arnold says, conduct is three-fourths of 
life, then a careful inquiry into the laws of conduct is in- 
dispensable to the proper interpretation of the meaning 
and purpose of life. Conduct of itself, however, is merely 
the c outward. expression. of of. character ; Pane character again 
has its roots in personality ; so that if we are to form a just 
conception of life we have to examine.the forces which 
shape human personality and raise it_to.its highest power 
and efficiency. In estimating the value of man all the 
facts of consciousness and experience must be considered. 
Hence no adequate account of the end of life can be given 
without regard to that which, if it is true, must be the 
most stupendous fact of history—the fact of Christ. 

If the Christian is a man to whom no incident of ex- 
perience is secular and no duty insignificant, because all 
things belong to God and all life is dominated by the spirit 
of Christ, then Christian Ethics must be the application of 
Christianity to conduct; and its theme must be the 
systematic study of the ideals and forces which are alone 
adequate to shape character and fit man for the highest 
conceivable destiny—fellowship | with, and likeness to, the 
Divine Being in whose image he has been made. This, of 
course, may be said to be the aim of all theology. The 
theologian must not be content to discuss merely specula- 
tive problems about God and man. He must seek above 


2 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHIOS 


all things to bring the truths of revelation to bear upon 
human practice. All knowledge has its practical implicate. 
The dogma which cannot be translated into duty is apt to 
be a vague abstraction. 

In all ages there has been a tendency to separate truth 
and duty. But knowledge has two sides; it is at once a 
revelation and a challenge. There is no truth which has 
not its corresponding obligation, and no obligation which 
has not its corresponding truth. And not until every truth 
is rounded into its duty, and every duty is referred back 
into its truth shall we attain to that clearness of vision and 
consistency of moral life, to promote which is the primary 
task of Christian Ethics. | 

It is this practical element which gives to the study of 
morals its justification and makes it specially important 
for the Christian teacher. In this sense Ethics is really the 
crown of theology and ought to be the end of all previous 
study. 

As a separate branch of study Christian Ethics dates only 
from the Reformation. It was natural, and perhaps in- 
evitable that the first efforts of the Church should be 
occupied with the formation and elaboration of dogma. 
With a few notable exceptions, among whom may be 
mentioned Basil, Clement, Alquin and Thomas Aquinas, 
the Church fathers and schoolmen paid but scanty atten- 
tion to the ethical side of religion. It was only after 
the Reformation that theology, Roman and Protestant 
alike, was divided into different branches. The Roman 
Catholic name for what we style Ethics is ‘moral 
philosophy,’ which, however, consists mainly of directions 
for father confessors in their dealing with perplexed 
souls. Christian Ethics appears for the first time as the 
name of a treatise by a French theologian of the Calvinistic 
persuasion—Daneus, whose work, however, is confined to 
an exposition of the Decalogue. The first recorded work 
of the Lutheran church is the Theologia Moralis, written 
in 1634, by George Calixtus. 

But the modern study of the subject really dates from 


INTRODUCTION 3 


Schleiermacher (1768-1834), who divides theology into two 
sections, Dogmatics and Ethics, giving to the latter an in- 
dependent treatment. Since his time Ethics has been re- 
garded as a separate discipline, and within the last few 
decades increasing attention has been devoted to it. 

This strong ethical tendency is one of the most notice- 
able features of the present age. Everywhere to-day the 
personal human interest is in evidence. We see it in the 
literature of the age and especially in the best poetry, be- 
ginning already with Coleridge and Wordsworth, and con- 
tinued in Tennyson and Browning. It is the inner life of 
man as depicted to us by these master singers, the story of 
the soul, even more than the delineation of nature which 
appeals to man’s deepest experience and evokes his finest 
response. We see it in the art of our times, which, not 
content to be a mere expression of sensuous beauty or life- 
less nature, seeks to be instinct with human sympathy and 
to become the vehicle of the ideas and aims of man. We 
see it in modern fiction, which is no longer the narration of 
a simple tale, but the subtle analysis of character, and the 
intricate study of the passions and ambitions of common life. 
History to-day is not concerned so much with recording 
the intrigues of kings and the movements of armies as with 
scrutinising the motives and estimating the persona] forces 
which have shaped the ages. Even in the domain of 
theology itself this tendency is visible. Our theologians 
are not content with discussing abstract doctrines or re- 
counting the decisions of church councils, but are turning 
to the gospels and seeking to depict the life of Jesus—to 
probe the secret of His divine humanity and to interpret 
the meaning for the world of His unique personality. 

Nor is this tendency confined to professional thinkers 
and theologians, it is affecting the common mind of the 
laity. ‘Never was there a time,’ says a modern writer, 
“when plain people were less concerned with the meta- 
physics or the ecclesiasticism of Christianity. The con- 
struction of systems and the contention of creeds which once 
appeared the central themes of human interest are now re- 


i CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


garded by millions of busy men and women as mere echoes 
of ancient controversies, if not mere mockeries of the 
problems of the present day.’ ‘The Church under the in- 
spiration of this new feeling for humanity is turning with 
fresh interest to the contemplation of the character of 
Jesus Christ, and is rising to a more lofty idea of its re- 
sponsibilities towards the world. More than ever in the 
past, it is now felt that Christianity must vindicate itself 
as a practical religion; and that in view of the great 
problems—scientific, social and industrial, which the new 
conditions of an advancing civilisation have created, the 
Church, if it is to fulfil its function as the interpreter and 
guide of thought, must come down from its heights of calm 
seclusion and grapple with the actual difficulties of men, not 
indeed by assuming a political role or acting as a divider 
and judge amid conflicting secular aims, but by revealing 
the mind of Christ and bringing the principles of the gospel 
\_ to bear upon the complex life of society. 

No one who reflects upon the spirit of the times will 
doubt that there are reasons of urgent importance why this 
aspect of Christian life and duty, which we have been con- 
sidering, should be specially insisted upon to-day. Of these 
the first and foremost is the prevalence of a materialistic 
philosophy. Taking its rise in the evolutionary theories 
of last century, this view is now being applied with relent- 
less logic as an interpretation of the problems of society by 
a school of socialistic writers. Man, it is said, is the 
creature of heredity and environment alone. Condition 
creates character, and relief from the woes of humanity is 
to be sought, not in the transformation of the individual 
but in the revolutionising of the circumstances of life. As 
a consequence of this philosophy of externalism there is a 
filtering down of these materialistic views to the multitude, 
who care, indeed, little for theories, but are quick to be 
affected by a prevailing tone. Underlying the feeling 
of unrest and dissatisfaction, so marked a feature of 
our present day life, there is distinctly discernible among 
the masses a loosening of religious faith and a slackening 


INTRODUCTION 5 


of moral obligation. The idea of personality and the sense 
of duty are not so vivid and strong as they used to be. A 
vague sentimentalising about sin has taken the place of the 
more robust view of earlier times, and evil is traced to un- 
toward environment rather than to feebleness of individual 
will. And finally, to name no other cause, there is a 
tendency in our day among all classes to divorce religion 
from life—to separate the sacred from the secular, and to 
regard worship and work as belonging to two entirely 
distinct realms of existence. 

For these reasons, among others, there is a special need, 
as it seems to us, for a systematic study of Christian Ethics 
on the part of those who are to be the leaders of thought and 
the teachers of the people. The materialistic view of life 
must be met by a more adequate Christian philosophy. 
The unfaith and pessimism of the age must be overcome 
by the advocacy of an idealistic conception which insists 
not only upon the personality and worth of man, involving 
duties as well as rights, but also upon the supremacy of 
conscience in obedience to the law of Christ. Above all, 
we need an ethic which will show that religion must be co- 
extensive with life, transfiguring and spiritualising all its 
activities and relationships. Life is a unity and all duty 
is one, whether it be duty to God or duty toman. It must 
be all of a piece, like the robe of Christ, woven from the 
top to the bottom without seam. It takes its spring from 
one source and is dominated by one spirit. In the 
Christianity of Christ there stand conspicuous two great 
ideas bound together, indeed, in a higher—love to God the 
Father. ‘These are personal perfection and the service of 
mankind—the culture of self and the care of others. ‘Be 
ye perfect’ and ‘love your neighbour as yourself.’ It is 
the glory of Christianity to have harmonised these seemingly 
competing aims. The disciple of Christ finds that he cannot 
realise his own life except as he seeks the good of others ; 
and that he cannot effectively help his fellows except by 
giving to them that which he himself is. This, as we take 
it, is the Christian conception of the moral life; and it is 


6 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


the business of Christian Ethics to show that it is at onee 
reasonable and practical. 


The present volume will be divided into four main parts, 
entitled, Postulates, Personality, Character and Conduct. 
The first will deal with the meaning of Ethics generally and 
its relation to cognate subjects; and specially with the 
Philosophical, Psychological and Theological presupposi- 
tions of Christian Ethics. The second part will be devoted 
to man as moral subject, and will analyse the capacities of 
the soul which respond to the calls and claims of the new 
Life. The third Section will involve a consideration of the 
formative Principles of Character, the moulding of the soul, 
the Ideals, Motives and Forces by means of which the 
‘New Man’ is ‘ recreated’ and fashioned. Finally, under 
Conduct, the Virtues, Duties and Rights of man will be 
discussed ; and the various spheres of service and in- 
stitutions of society examined in relation to which the moral 
life in its individual and social aspects is manifested and 
developed. 


SECTION A 
POSTULATES 





CHAPTER I 
THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF ETHICS 


PHILOSOPHY has been defined as ‘ thinking things together.’ 
Every man, says Hegel, is a philosopher, and in so far as it 
is the natural tendency of the human mind to connect and 
unify the manifold phenomena of life, the paradox of the 
German thinker is not without a measure of truth. But 
while this is only the occasional pastime of the ordinary 
individual, it is the conscious and habitual aim of the 
philosopher. In daily life people are wont to make assump- 
tions which they do not verify, and employ figures of speech 
which of necessity are partial and inadequate. It is the 
business of philosophy to investigate the pre-suppositions 
of common life and to translate into realities the pictures 
of ordinary language. It was the method of Socrates to 
challenge the current modes of speaking and to ask his 
fellow-men what they meant when they used such words 
as ‘ goodness,’ ‘ virtue’ ‘justice.’ Every time you employ 
any of these terms, he said, you virtually imply a whole 
theory of life. If you would have an intelligent understand- 
ing of yourself and the world of which you form a part, you 
must cease to live by custom and speak by rote. You 
must seek to bring the manifold phenomena of the universe 
and the various experiences of life into some kind of unity 
and see them as co-ordinated parts of a whole. 

When men thus begin to reflect on the origin and con- 
nection of things, three questions at once suggest themselves 
—what, how, and why? What is the world? How dol 
know it ? and why am I here? We might briefly classify 
the three great departments of human thought as attempts 

9 


10 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


to answer these three inquiries, What exists is the pro- 
blem of Metaphysics. What am I and how do I know ? is 
the question of Psychology. What-is.my purpose, what 
' amI todo? isthe subject of Ethics. These questions are 
closely related, and the answer given to one largely de- 
termines the solution of the others. The truths gained by 
philosophical thought are not confined to the kingdom of 
abstract speculation but apply in the last resort to life. 
The impulse to know is only a phase of the more general 
impulse to be and to act. Beneath all man’s activities, 
as their source and spring, there is ever some dim percep- 
tion of an end to be attained. ‘The ultimate end,’ says 
Paulsen, ‘impelling men to meditate upon the nature of 
the universe, will always be the desire to reach some con- 
clusion concerning the meaning of the source and goal of 
their lives.’ The origin and aim of all philosophy is con- 
sequently to be sought in Ethics. 

1. If we ask more particularly what Ethics is, definition 
affords us some light. It is to Aristotle that we are in- 
debted for the earliest use of this term, and it was he who 
gave to the subject its title and systematic form. The 
name ta. €6cxa is derived from 760s, character, which again 
is closely connected with é60s, signifying custom. /Ethics, 
therefore, according to Aristotle is the science of character, 
character being understood to mean according to its 
etymology, customs or habits of conduct. But while the 
modern usage of the term ‘character’ suggests greater 
inwardness than would seem to be implied in the ancient 
definition, it must be remembered that under the title of 
Ethics Aristotle had in view, not only a description of the 
outward habits of man, but also that which gives to custom 
its value, viz., the sources of action, the motives, and especi- ) 
ally the ends which guide a man in the conduct of life. / 
But since men live before they reflect, Ethics and Morality 
are not synonymous. So long as there is a congruity 
between the customs of a people and the practical require- 
ments of life, ethical questions do not occur. It is only 
when difficulties arise as to matters of right, for which the 


I.] THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF ETHICS 11 


existing usages of society offer no solution, that reflection 
upon morality awakens. No longer content with blindly 
accepting the formule of the past, men are prompted to 
ask, whence do these customs come, and what is their 
authority ? In the conflict of duties, which a wider out- 
look inevitably creates, the inquirer seeks to estimate their 
relative values, and to bring his conception of life into 
harmony with the higher demands and larger ideals which 
have been disclosed to him. This has been the invariable 
course of ethical inquiry. At different stages of history-— 
in the age of the Sophists of Ancient Greece, when men were 
no longer satisfied with the old forms of life and truth : 
at the dawn of the Christian era, when a new ideal was re 
vealed in Christ : during the period of the Reformation, 
when men threw off the bondage of the past and made a 
stand for the rights of the individual conscience: and in 
more recent times, when in the field of political life the 
antithesis between individual and social instincts had 
awakened larger and more enlightened views of civic and 
social responsibility—the study of Ethics, as a science of 
moral life, has come to the front. 

Ethics may, there be defined_as.. ience of the , 
end _ of life—the science which inquires into its meaningy 
and purpose. But inasmuch as the end or purpose of life 
involves the idea of some good which is in harmony with 
the highest conceivable well-being of man—some good 
which belongs to the true fulfilment of life—Ethics may 
also be defined as the science of the highest good or summum 


_ bonum. 


Finally, Ethics may be considered not only as the science 
of the highest good or ultimate end of life, but also as the 
study of all that conditions that end, the dispositions, 
desires and motives of the individual, all the facts and 
forces which bear upon the will and shape human life in its 


various social relationships. 


m. Arising out of this general definition three features 
may be mentioned as descriptive of its distinctive character 
among the sciences. 


12 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


1. Ethics is concerned with the ideal of life. By an 
ideal we mean a better state of being than has been actually 
realised. We are confessedly not as we should be, and there 
floats before the minds of men a vision of some higher con- 
dition of life and society than that which exists. Life 
divorced from an ideal is ethically valueless. Some con- 
ception of the supreme good is the imperative demand and 
moral necessity of man’s being. Hence the chief business 
of Ethics is to answer the question: What is the supreme 
good ? For what should a man live? What, in short, is 
the ideal of life? In this respect Ethics as a science is 
distinguished from the physical sciences. They explain 
facts and trace sequences, but they do not form ideals or 
endeavour to move the will in the direction of them. 

2. Ethics again is concerned with a norm of life, and in 
this sense it is frequently styled a normative science. 
That is to say, it is a science which prescribes rules or 
maxims according to which life is to be regulated. This 
is sometimes expressed by saying that Ethics treats of what 
ought to be. The ideal must not be one which simply floats 
in the air. It must be an ideal which is possible, and, 
therefore, as such, obligatory. It is useless to feel the 
worth of a certain idea, or even to speak of the desirability 
of it, if we do not feel also that it ought to be realised. 
Moral judgments imply an ‘ought,’ and that ‘ ought’ 
implies a norm or standard, in the light of which, as a 
criterion, all obligation must be tested, and according to 
which all conduct must be regulated. 

3. Ethics, once more, is concerned with the will. It is 
based specifically on the fact that man is not only an in- 
tellectual being (capable of knowing) and a sensitive being 
(possessed of feeling) but also a volitional being ; that is, a 
being endowed with self-determining activity. It implies 
that man is responsible for his intentions, dispositions and 
actions. The idea of a supreme ideal at which he is to aim 
and a norm or standard of conduct according to which he 
ought to regulate his life, would have no meaning if we 
did not presuppose the power of self-determination. What- 


1.] THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF ETHICS 13 


ever is not willed has no moral value. Where there is no 
freedom of choice, we cannot speak of an action as either 
good or evil.1 When we praise or blame a man’s conduct 
we do so under the assumption that his action is voluntary. 
In all moral action purpose isimplied. This is the meaning 
of the well-known dictum of Kant, ‘There is nothing in 
the world . . . that can be called good without qualifica- 
tion except a good will. A good will is good, not because 
of what it performs or effects, not by its aptness for the 
attainment of some proposed end, but simply by virtue of 
the volition.’* It is the inner aim, the good will which 
alone gives moral worth to any endeavour. It is not what 
I do but the reason why I do it which is chiefly of ethical 
value. The essence of virtue resides in the will, not in the 
achievement; in the intention or motive, not in the result. 

m1. The propriety of styling Ethics a science has some- 
times been questioned. Science, it is said, has to do with 
certain necessary and uniform facts of experience; its 
object is simply to trace effects from causes and to formulate 
laws according to which sequences inevitably result from 
certain ascertained causes or observed facts. But is not 
character, with which Ethics confessedly deals, just that 
concerning which no definite conclusions can be predicted ? 
Is not conduct, dependent as it is on the human will, just 
‘the element in man which cannot be explained as the re- 
sultant of calculable forces? If the will is free, and is the 
chief factor in the moulding of life, then you cannot forecast 
what line conduct will take or predict what shape character 
will assume. The whole conception of Ethics as a science 
must, it is contended, fall to the ground, if we admit a 
variable and incalculable element in conduct. 

Some writers, on this account, are disposed to regard 
Ethics as an art rather than a science, and indeed, like every 
normative science, it may be regarded as lying midway 
between them. A science may be said to teach us to know 


1 Cf. Mackenzie, Manual of Hthics, p. 32; also Wuttke, Christian Ethics 
(Eng. Trans.), vol. i. p. 14. 
2 Metaph. of Morals, sect. i. 


14 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


and an art todo: but as has been well remarked, ‘a norma- 
tive science teaches to know how to do.’! Ethics may 
indeed be regarded both as a science and an art. In so far 
as 1t examines and explains certain phenomena of character 
itis a science : butin so far as it attempts to regulate human 
conduct by instruction and advice it is an art.2, Yet when 
all is said, in so far as Ethics has to do with the volitional 
side of man,—with decisions and acts of will,—there must be 
something indeterminate and problematic in it which pre- 
cludes it from being designated an exact science. A certain 
variableness belongs to character, and conduct cannot be 
pronounced good or bad without reference to the acting 
subject. Actions cannot be wholly explained by law, and 
a large portion of human life (and that the highest and 
noblest) eludes analysis. A human being is not simply a 
part of the world. He is able to break in upon the sequence 
of events and set in motion new forces whose effects neither 
he himself nor his fellows can estimate. It is the unique 
quality of rational beings that in great things and in small 
things they act from ideas. The magic power of thought 
cannot be exaggerated. Great conceptions have great 
consequences, and they rule the world. A new spiritual 
idea shoots forth its rays and enlightens to larger issues 
generations of men. There is a mystery in every forth- 
putting of will-power, and every expression of personality. 
Character cannot be computed. The art of goodness, of 
living nobly, if so unconscious a thing may be called an 
art, is one certainly which defies complete scientific treat- 
ment. Itis with facts like these that Ethics has to do; and 
while we may lay down broad general principles which must 
underlie the teaching of every true prophet and the conduct 
of every good man, there will always be an element with 
which science cannot cope. 

Iv. It will not be necessary, after what has been said, to 
trace at any length the relations between Ethics and the 


1 Mackenzie, Manual of Ethics, p. 8. See also Muirhead, Hlements of 
Ethics. 
2 Hyslop, Elements of Ethics, p. 1. 


ri THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF ETHICS 15 


special mental sciences, such as Logic, Austhetics, and 
Politics. 

1, Logic is the science of the formal laws of thought, and 
is concerned not with the truth of phenomena, but merely 
with the laws of correct reasoning about them. Ethics 
establishes the laws according to which we ought to act. 
Logic legislates for the reason, and decerns the laws which 
the intellect must obey if it would think correctly. Both 
sciences determine what is valid ; but while Logic is con- 
fined to the realm of what is valid in reasoning, Ethics is 
occupied with what is valid in action. There is, indeed, a 
logic of life; and in so far as all true conduct must have 
a rational element in it and be guided by certain intel- 
ligible forms, Ethics may be described as a kind of logic of 
character. 

2. The connection between Ethics and Aisthetics is closer. 
Aisthetics is the science of the laws of beauty, while Ethics 
is the science of the laws of the good. But in so far as 
Aisthetics deals with the emotions rather than the reason 
it comes into contact with Ethics in the psychological field. 
In its narrower sense Aisthetics deals with beauty merely 
in an impersonal way; and its immediate object is not 
what is morally beautiful, but rather that which is beautiful 
in itself irrespective of moral considerations. Ethics, on 
the other hand, is concerned with personal worth as ex- 
pressed in perfection of will and action. Conduct may be 
beautiful and character may afford Aisthetic satisfaction, 
but Ethics, in so far as it is concerned with judgments of 
virtue, is independent of all thought of the mere beauty 
or utility of conduct. Aisthetic consideration may in- 
deed aid practical morality, but it is not identical with it. 
It is conceivable that what is right may not be immediately 
beautiful, and may indeed in its pursuit or realisation in- 
volve action which contradicts our ideas of beauty. But 
though both sciences have different aims they are occupied 
largely with the same emotions, and are connected by a 
common idealising purpose. In the deepest sense, what is 
good is beautiful and what is beautiful is good; and 


16 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


ultimately, in the moral and spiritual life, goodness and 
beauty coincide. Indeed, so close is the connection be- 
tween the two conceptions that the Greeks used the same 
word, 76 xaXddv, to express beauty of form and nobility 
of character. And even in modern times the expression 
‘a beautiful soul,’ indicates the intimate relation between 
inner excellence of life and outward attractiveness. Both 
Aisthetics and Ethics have regard to that symmetry or 
proportion of life which fulfils our ideas at once of good- 
ness and of beauty. In this sense Schiller sought to re- 
move the sharpness of Kant’s moral theory by claiming a 
place in the moral life for beauty. Our actions are, indeed, 
good when we do our duty because we ought, but they are 
beautiful when we do it because we cannot do otherwise, 
because they have become our second nature. ‘The purpose 
of all culture, says Schiller, is to harmonise reason and sense, 
and thus to fulfil the idea of a perfect manhood. 


‘When I dared question: ‘It is beautiful, 
But is it true?” Thy answer was, ‘In truth lives 
beauty.” ’ 2 


3. Politics is still more closely related to Ethics, and 
indeed Ethics may be said to comprehend Politics. Both 
deal with human action and institution, and cover largely 
the same field. For man is not merely an individual, but 
is a part of a social organism. We cannot consider the 
virtues of the individual life without also considering the 
society to which he is related, and the interaction of the 
whole and its part. Politics is usually defined as the science 
of government, which of course, involves all the institutions 
and laws affecting men’s relations to each other. But while 
Politics is strictly concerned only with the outward con- 
dition of the state’s well-being and the external order of 

1 Schiller, Uber Anmuth und Wiirde. Cf. also Ruskin, Mod. Painters, 
vol. ii.; Seeley, Natural Religion, and Inge, Faith and its Psychology, 
p. 203 ff. See also Bosanquet, Hist. of Aesthetic. We are indebted to 
Romanticism, and especially to Novalis in Germany and Cousin in France 


for the thought that the good and the beautiful meet and amalgamate iu 
God, 2 Browning. 





1.] THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF ETHICS 17 


~ 


the community, Ethics seeks the internal good or virtue 
of mankind, and is occupied with an ideal society in which 
each individual shall be able to realise the true aim and 
meaning of life. But after all, as Aristotle said, Politics 


is really a branch of Ethics, and both are inseparable from, _ 


and complementary of each other. On the one hand, 
Ethics cannot ignore the material conditions of human 
welfare nor minimise the economic forces which shape 
society and make possible the moral aims of man. On 
the other hand, Economics must recognise the service of 
ethical study, and keep in view the moral purposes of life, 
otherwise it is apt to limit its consideration to merely 
selfish and material ends. 

v. While Ethics is thus closely connected with the 
sciences just named, there are two departments of know- 
ledge, pre-supposed indeed in all mental studies, which in a 
very intimate way affect the science of Ethics. These are 
Metaphysics on the one hand and Psychology on the 
other. 

1. Metaphysics is pre-supposed by all the sciences ; and 
indeed, all our views of life, even our simplest experiences, 
involve metaphysical assumptions. It has been well said 
that the attempt to construct an ethical theory without a 
metaphysical basis issues not in a moral science without 
assumptions, but in an Ethics which becomes confused in 
philosophical doubts. Leslie Stephen proposes to ignore 
Metaphysics, and remarks that he is content ‘to build upon 
the solid earth.’ But, as has been pertinently asked, ‘How 
does he know that the earth is solid on which he builds ?’ 
This is a question of Metaphysics. The claim is frequently 
made by a certain class of writers, that we withdraw our- 
selves from all metaphysical sophistries, and betake our- 
selves to the guidance of commonsense. But what is 
this commonsense of which the ordinary man vaunts him- 
self? It is in reality a number of vague assumptions 
borrowed unconsciously from old exploded theories—asser- 
tions, opinions, beliefs, accumulated, no one knows how, 


1 Cf, Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, p. 3, 
B 


ti 


™s, 


\voogeremnecnernenmnsen 


18 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


and accepted as settled judgments. We do not escape 
philosophy by refusing to think. Some kind of theory of 
life is implied in such words, ‘soul,’ ‘ duty,’ _< freedom,’ 
‘ power,’ ‘ God,” which the unrefle sting md ts d daily using. 
It is useless to say We~can-dispensé with philosophy, for 
that is simply to content ourselves with bad philosophy. 
‘To ignore the progress and development in the history of 
Philosophy,’ says T. H. Green,? ‘is not to return to the 
simplicity of a pre-philosophic age, but to condemn our- 
selves to grope in the maze of cultivated opinion, itself the 
confused result of these past systems of thought which we 
will not trouble ourselves to think out.’ The aim of all 
philosophy, as Plato said, is just to correct the assumptions 
of the ordinary mind, and to grasp in their unity and 
cohesion the ultimate principles which the mind feels must 
be at the root of all reality. We have an ethical interest in 
determining whether there be any moral reality beneath 
the appearances of the world. Ethical questions, therefore, 
run back into Metaphysics. If we take Metaphysics in its 
widest sense as involving the idea of some ultimate end, to 
the realisation of which the whole process of the world as 
known to us is somehow a means, we may easily see that 
metaphysical inquiry, though distinct from ethical, is its 
necessary pre-supposition. The Being or Purpose of God, 
the great first cause, the world as fashioned, ordered and 
interpenetrated by Him, and man as conditioned by and 
dependent upon the Deity—are postulates of the moral life - 
and must be accepted as a basis of all ethical study. The 
distinction between Ethics and Philosophy did not arise at 
once. In early Greek speculation, almost to the time of 
Aristotle, Metaphysics and Morals were not separated. 
And even in later times, Spinoza and to some extent Green, 
though they professedly treat of Ethics, hardly dissociate 
metaphysical from ethical considerations. Nor is that to 
be wondered at when men are dealing with the first 
principles of all being and life. Our view of God and of the 


1 See Author’s History of Philosophy, p. 585. 
2 Introduction to Hume’s Works. 


I.] THE NATURE AND SCOPE OF ETHICS 19 


world, our fundamental Welt-Anschauung cannot but 
determine our view of man and his moral life. In every 
philosophical system from Plato to Hegel, in which the 
universe is regarded as having a rational meaning and 
ultimate end, the good of human beings is conceived as 
identical with, or at least as included in the universal good. 


2. But if a sound metaphysical basis be a necessary~ 


requisite for the adequate consideration of Ethics, Psychology 
as the science of the human soul is so vitally connected with 
Ethics, that the two studies may almost be treated as 
branches of one subject. An Ethic which takes no account 
of psychological assumptions would be impossible. Con- 
sciously or unconsciously every treatment of moral subjects 
is permeated by the view of the soul or personality of man 
which the writer has adopted, and his meaning of conduct 
will be largely determined by the theory of human freedom 
and responsibility with which he starts. Questions as to 
character and duty invariably lead to inquiries as to 
certain states of the agent’s mind, as to the functions and 
possibilities of his natural capacities and powers. We can- 
not pronounce an action morally good or bad until we have 
determined the extent and limits of his faculties and have 
investigated the questions of disposition and purpose, of 
intention and motive, which lie at the root of all conduct, 
and without which actions are neither moral nor immoral. 
It is surely a mistake to say, as some do, that as logic deals 
with the correctness of reasoning, so Ethics deals only 
with the correctness of conduct, and is not directly con- 
cerned with the processes by which we come to act correctly.1 
On the contrary, merely correct action may be ethically 
worthless, and conduct obtains its moral value from the 
motives or intentions which actuate and determine it. 
Ethics cannot, therefore, ignore the psychological processes 
of feeling, desiring and willing of the acting subject. It is 
indeed true that in ordinary life men are frequently judged 
to be good or bad, according to the outward effect of their 
actions, and material results are often regarded as the sole 


1 Mackenzie seems to imply this view, Hthics, p. 25. 


Ps 
A 
t 


20 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


measure of good. But while it may be a point of difficulty 
in theoretic morality to determine the comparative worth 
and mutual relation of good affections and good actions, all 
surely will allow that a certain quality of disposition or 
motive in the agent is required to constitute an action 
morally good, and that it is not enough to measure virtue 
by its utility or its beneficial effect alone. Hence all 
moralists are agreed that the main object of their investiga- 
tion must belong to the psychical side of human life— 
whether they hold that man’s ultimate end is to be found in 
the sphere of pleasure or maintain that his well-being lies 
in the realisation of virtue for its own sake. The problems 
as to the origin and adequacy of conscience, as to the mean- 
ing and validity of voluntary action; the questions con- 
cerning motives and desires, as to the historical evolution 
of moral customs, and man’s relation at each stage of his 
history to the social, political and religious institutions amid 
which he lives—are subjects which, though falling within 
the scope of Ethics, have their roots in the science of the 
soul. The very existence of a science of Ethics depends 
upon the answers which Psychology gives to such questions. 
If, for example, it be decided that there is in man no such 
faculty or organ as conscience, and that what men so 
designate is but a natural manifestation gradually evolved 
in and through the physical and social development of 
man: or if we deny the self-determining power of human 
beings and assume that what we call the freedom of the 
will is a delusion (or at least, in the last resort, a negligible 
element) and that man is but one of the many phenomena 
or facts of a physical universe—then we may continue, in- 
deed, as some evolutionary and naturalistic thinkers do, 
to speak of a science of Ethics, but such a science will not 
be a study of the moral life as we understand it and have 
defined it. 

Ethics, therefore, while dependent upon the philo- 
sophical sciences, has its own distinct content and scope. 
The end of life, that for which a man should live, with all 
its implications, forms the subject of moral inquiry. It is 


I1.] THE POSTULATES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 23 


given a new direction to the moral life of man. Man’s life 
at its highest can only be interpreted in the light of this 
supreme revelation, and can only be accounted for as the 
creation of the dynamic force of this unique Personality. 

But while this truth gives to Christian Ethics its distine- 
tive character and pre-eminent worth it does not throw 
discredit upon philosophical Ethics, nor indeed separate the 
two departments by any hard and fast lines. They have 
much incommon. A large domain of conduct is covered 
by both. The so-called pagan virtues have their value for 
Christian character and are in the line of Christian virtue. 
Even in his natural state man is constituted for the moral 
life, and, as St. Paul states, is not without some knowledge 
of right and wrong. The moral attainments of the ancients 
are not to be regarded simply as ‘splendid vices,’ but as 
positive achievements of good. Duty may differ in con- 
tent, but it is of the same kind under any system. Purity 
is purity and benevolence beneyolence, whether manifested 
in a heathen or a Christian. / While, therefore, Christian 
Ethics takes its point of departure from the special revela- 
tion of God and the unique disclosure of man’s possibilities 
in Christ, it gladly accepts and freely uses the results of 
moral philosophy in so far as they throw light upon the 
fundamental facts of human nature.) As a system of 
morals Christianity claims to be inclusive. It takes 
cognisance of all the data of consciousness, and assumes as 
its own, from whatever quarter it may come, all ascertained 
truth. The facts of man’s natural history, the conclusions 
from philosophy, the manifold lights afforded by previous 
speculation—all are gathered up, sifted and tried by one 
all-authoritative measure of truth—the mind of Christ. 
It completes what is lacking in other systems in so far as 
their conclusions are based upon an incomplete survey of 
facts. It deals, in short, with personality in its highest 
ranges of moral power and spiritual] consciousness and seeks 
to interpret life by its greatest possibilities and loftiest 
attainments as they are revealed in Christ. 

But\while Christian Ethics is at one with philosophic 


24 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


Kthics in postulating a natural capacity for spiritual life, 
it is differentiated from all non-Christian systems by its 
distinctive belief in the possibility of the re-creation of 
character. ) Speculative Ethics prescribes only what ought 
ideally to be done or avoided. It takes no account of the 
foes of the spiritual life; nor does it consider the remedy 
by which character, once it is perverted or destroyed, can 
be restored and transformed./ Christian Ethics, on the 
other hand, is concerned primarily with the question, By 
what power can a man achieve the right and do the good.?—~ 
It is not enough to postulate the inherent capacity of man. 
Experience of human nature shows that there are hostile 
elements which too often frustrate his natural develop- 
ment. Hence the practical problem which Christian Ethics 
has to face is, How can the spiritual ideal be made a 
reality ? It regards man as standing in need of recovery, 
and it is forced to assume, that which philosophical Ethics 
does not recognise, a divine power by which character can 
be renewed. Christianity claims to be ‘the power of God 
unto salvation to every one that believeth.’ Christian 
Ethics therefore is based upon the twofold assumption that 
the ideal of humanity has actually been revealed in Christ, 
and that in Him also is the power by which man may 
realise this ideal. \ 


II 


The relation of Christian Ethics to Dogmatics.—Within the 
sphere of theology proper the two main constituents of 
Christian teaching are Dogmatics and Ethics, or Doctrines 
and Morals. Though it is convenient to regard these 
separately they really form a whole, and are but two aspects 
of one subject. It is difficult to define their limits, and to 
say where Dogmatics ends and Ethics begins. The distinc- 
tion is sometimes expressed by saying that Dogmatics is a 
theoretic science, whereas Ethics is practical. It is true 
that Ethics stands nearer to everyday life and deals with 
matters of practical conduct, while Dogmatics is concerned 
with beliefs and treats of their origin and elucidation. 


II.] THE POSTULATES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 25 


But, on the other hand, Ethics also takes cognisance of 
beliefs as well as actions, and is interested in judgments 
not less than achievements. There is a practical side of 
doctrine and there is a theoretic side of morals. Even the 
most theoretic of sciences, Metaphysics, though, as Novalis 
said, it bakes no bread, is not without its direct bearing 
upon life. Dogmatic theology when divorced from prac- 
tical interest is in danger of becoming mere pedantry ; and 
ethical inquiry, if it has no dogmatic basis, loses scientific 
value and sinks into a mere enumeration of duties. Nor 
is the common statement, that Dogmatics shows what we 
should believe and Ethics what we ought to do, an adequate 
one. Moral precepts are also objects of faith, and what 
we should believe involves moral requirements and pre- 
supposes a moral character. Schleiermacher has been 
charged with ignoring the difference between the two 
disciplines, but with scant justice. For, while he regards 
the two subjects as but different branches of Christian 
theology, and insists upon their intimate connection, he 
does not neglect their distinction. There has been a grow- 
ing tendency to accentuate the difference, and recent 
writers such as Jacoby, Haering and Lemme, not to men- 
tion Martensen, Dorner and Wuttke, claim for Ethics a 
separate and independent treatment. The ultimate con- 
nection between Dogmatics and Ethics cannot be ignored 
without loss to both. It tends only to confusion to speak 
as some do of ‘a creedless morality.’ On the one hand, 
Ethics saves Dogmaticsfrom evaporating into unsubstantial 
speculation, and by affording the test of workableness, 
keeps it upon the solid foundation of fact. On the other 
hand, Dogmatics supplies to Ethics its formative principles 
and normative standards, and preserves the moral life from 
degenerating into the vagaries of fanaticism or the apathy 
of fatalism. But while both sciences form complementary 
sides of theology and stand in relations of mutual service, 
each deals with the human consciousness in a different way. 
Dogmatics regards the Christian life from the standpoint 
of divine dependence: Ethics regards it from the stand- 


26 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


point of human determination. Dogmatics deals with 
faith in relation to God, as the receptive organ of grace: 
Ethics views faith rather in relation to man, as a human 
activity or organ of conduct. The one shows us how our 
adoption into the kingdom of God is the work of divine 
love: the other shows how this knowledge of salvation 
manifests itself in love to God and man, and must be 
worked out through all the relationships of life. 


Ii 


We may define more particularly the relation of Ethics 
to Dogmatics by enumerating briefly the doctrinal postu- 
lates or assumptions with which Ethics starts. 

1. Ethics assumes the Christian tdea of God. God is 
for Ethics not an impersonal force, nor even simply the 
creator of the universe as philosophy might conceive Him. 
Creative power is not of course denied, but it is qualified 
by what theology calls the ‘moral attributes of God.’ 
We do not ignore His omnipotence, but we look beyond 
it, to ‘the love that tops the power, the Christ in God.’ ? 
It is not necessary here to sketch the Old Testament 
teaching with regard to God. It is sufficient to state that 
the New Testament writers, while not attempting to pro- 
claim abstract doctrines, took over generally the Hebrew 
conception of the Deity as a God who was at once almighty, 
holy and righteous. The distinctive note which the New 
Testament emphasises is the Personality of God, and person- 
ality includes reason, will and love. The fact that we are 
His offspring, as St. Paul argues, is the basis of our true 
conception of God’s nature. Through that which is highest 
in man we are enabled to discern something of His character. 
But it is specially in and through Jesus Christ that the 
distinctive character of the Divine Personality is declared. 
Christ reveals Him as our Father, and everywhere the New 


1 Cf. Dorner, System der Christl. Hthik, p. 48. See also Newman Smyth, 
Christian Ethics, p. 44. 
2 Cf. Mackintosh, Christian Ethics, p. 11. 


II.J THE POSTULATES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 27 


Testament writers assume that men stand in the closest 
filial relations to him. In the fundamental conception of 
divine Fatherhood there are implicitly contained certain 
elements of ethical significance.1 Of these may be men- 
tioned : 

(1) The Spiritual Perfection of God.—The Christian doc- 
trine of God includes not only His personality, but His 
spiritual perfection. All that is highest and best in life is 
attributed to God. What we regard as having supreme 
moral worth is eternally realised in Him. It is this fact 
that prescribes man’s ideal and makes it binding. ‘ Be ye 
perfect even as your Father in heaven is perfect,’ says 
Christ. Because of what God is, spiritual and moral 
excellence takes precedence of all other aims which can be 
perceived and pursued by man. Morality is the revelation 
of an ideal eternally existing in the divine mind. ‘The 
belief in God,’ it has been said, ‘is the logical pre-supposition 
of an objective or absolute morality.’* The moral law, as 
the norm and goal of our life, obtains its validity and obliga- 
tion for us not because it is an arbitrarily-given command, 
but because it is of the very character of God. 

(2) The Sovereignty of God.—Not only the spiritual perfec- 
tion but the moral sovereignty of God is pre-supposed. He 
is the supreme excellence on whom all things depend, and 
in whom they find their ultimate explanation. The world 
is not merely His creation, it is the expression of His mind. 
He is not related to the universe as an artist is related to 
his work, but rather as a personal being to his own mental 
and moral activities. He is immanent in all the pheno- 
mena of nature and movements of life and thought ; and 
in the order and purpose of the world His character and will 
are manifested. The fact that the meaning and order of 
things are not imposed from without, but constitute their 
inner nature, reveals not only the completeness of His 


1 Cf. Lidgett, The Christian Religion, pp. 106, 485 ff., where the idea of 
God’s nature is admirably developed. 

2 Rashdall, The Theory of Gocd and Evil, vol. ii. p. 212. 

ne vad idem. But see Bosanquet, Principle of Indiv. and Value, 
p. ; 


28 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


sovereignty, but the purpose of it. The highest end of God, 
as moral and spiritual, is fulfilled by the constitution and 
education of spiritual beings like Himself, and in laying 
down the conditions which are necessary for their existence 
and perfecting. No definition of divine sovereignty can 
exclude the idea of moral freedom and the consequences 
bound up with it. Hence God must not only confer the 
gift of individual liberty, but respect it throughout the 
whole course of His dealings with man. 

(3) The Supremacy of Love.—This is the highest and most 
distinctive feature of the divine personality. Itis the sum 
of all the others ; as well as the special characteristic of the 
Fatherhood of God as revealed by Christ. ‘ God is love’ is 
the crowning statement of the Gospel and the fullest expres- 
sion of the divine nature. ‘The essential of all love is self- 
giving ; and the peculiarity of God’s love is the communica- 
tion and imparting of Himself to His creatures. The love 
of God finds its highest manifestation in the gift and sacrifice 
of HisSon. He is the supreme personality in history, revea!- 
ing God in and to the world. In the light of what Christ is 
we know what God is, and from His revelation there flows 
a new and ever-deepening experience of the divine Being. 

2. Christian Ethics presupposes the Christian doctrine of 
Sin. It is not the province of Ethics to discuss minutely 
the origin of evil or propound a theory of sin. But it must 
see to it that the view it takes is consistent with the truths 
of revelation and in harmony with the facts of life. <A false 
or inadequate conception of sin is as detrimental to Ethics 
as it is to Dogmatics; and upon our doctrine of evil depends 
very largely our interpretation of life in regard to its diffi- 
culties and purposes, its trials and triumphs. In the mean- 
time it is enough to remark that considerable vagueness of 
idea and looseness of expression exist concerning this 
subject. 

While some regard sin simply as a defect or shortcoming, 
a missing of the mark, as the Greek word éuapria implies, 
others treat it as a disease, or infirmity of the flesh—a 
malady affecting the physical constitution which may be 


u.] THE POSTULATES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 29 


incurred by heredity or induced by environment. In both 
cases it is regarded as a misfortune, rather than a fault, or 
even as a fate from which the notion of guilt is absent. 
While there is an element of truth in these representations, 
they are defective in so far as they do not take sufficient 
account of the personal and determinative factor in all 
sinful acts. The Christian view, though not denying that 
physical weakness and the influence of heredity and environ- 
ment do, in many cases, affect conduct, affirms that there is 
a personal element always present which these conditions 
do not explain. Sin is not merely negative. It is some- 
thing positive, not so much an imperfection as a trespass. 
It is to be accounted for not as an inherited or inherent ° 
malady, but as a/self-chosen perversity, It belongs to the 
spirit rather than to the body, and though it has its seat in 
the heart and in the emotions, it has to do principally with 
_the will. ‘Every man is tempted when he is drawn away 
by his own lust and enticed. ‘Then when lust has conceived 
it bringeth forth sin.’! The essence of sin is selfishness. It 
is the/deliberate choice of self in preference to God— 
personal and wilful rebellion against the known law of 
righteousness and truth.) There are, of course, degrees of 
wrongdoing and undoubtedly extenuating circumstances 
which must be taken into account in estimating the signifi- 
cance and enormity of guilt, but in the last resort Christian 
Ethics is compelled to postulate the fact of sin, and to regard 
it as a personal rebellion against the holy will of God, the 
deliberate choice of self and the wilful perversion of the 
powers of man into instruments of unrighteousness. 

_ 3, A third postulate, which is a corollary of the Christian 
“ view of God and of sin, is the Responsibility of Man. / Chris- 
tian Ethics treats every man as accountable for his thoughts 
and actions, and therefore, as capable of choosing the good 
as revealed in Christ. While not denying the sovereignty 
of God, nor minimising the mystery of evil, Christianity 
firmly maintains the doctrine of human freedom., An Ethic 
would be impossible if, on the one side, grace were absolutely 


1 James i, 18, 14. 


30 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


irresistible ; or, on the other, sin were unalterably necessi- 
tated. Whatever be the doctrine we formulate on these 
subjects, Ethics demands that what we call freedom be safe- 
guarded. An interesting question emerges at this point as 
to the possibility, apart from a knowledge of Christ, of 
choosing the good. Difficult as this question is, and though 
it was answered by Augustine and many of the early Fathers 
in the negative, the modern, and probably the more just 
view, is that we cannot hold mankind responsible unless we 
allow to all men the larger freedom and judge them accord- . 
ing to their light and opportunity. If non-Christians are 
fated to do evil, then no guilt can be imputed. History 
shows that a love of goodness has sometimes existed, and 
that many isolated acts of purity and kindness have been 
done, among people who have known nothing of the 
historical Christ. The New Testament recognises degrees 
of depravity in nations and individuals, and a measure of 
noble aspiration and honest endeavour in ordinary human 
nature. St. Paul plainly assumes some knowledge and 
performance on the part of the heathen, and though 
he denounces their immorality in unsparing terms, he does 
not affirm that pagan society was so corrupt that it had lost 
all knowledge of moral good. 


IV 


Before concluding this chapter some remarks regarding 
the authority and method of Christian Ethics may be not 
inappropriate. 

1. Christian Ethics is not directly concerned with critical 
questions as to the genuineness and authenticity of the 
New Testament writings. It is sufficient for its purpose 
that these have been generally received by the Church, 
and that they present in the Person of Christ the highest 
embodiment of the law and spirit of the moral life. The 
writings of the New Testament thus become ethically 
normative in virtue of their direct reflection of the mind of 
Christ and their special receptivity of His spirit. Their 


I. ] THE POSTULATES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 31 


authority, therefore, is Christ’s own authority, and has a 
value for us as His word is reproduced by them. It does 
not detract from the validity of the New Testament as the 
reflection of the spirit of Christ that there are discernible in 
it distinct signs of development of doctrine, a manifest 
growth in clearness and depth of insight and knowledge of 
the mind of Jesus. Such evidences of advancement are 
specially noticeable in the application of Christian prin- 
ciples to the practical problems of life, such as the questions 
of slavery, marriage, work and property. St. Paul does 
not disclaim the possibility of development, and he 
associates himself with those who know in part and wait 
for fuller light. In common with all Christians, Paul was 
doubtless conscious of a growing enrichment in spiritual 
knowledge ; and his later epistles show that he had reached 
to clearer prospects of Christ and His redemption, and had 
obtained a fuller grasp of the world-wide significance of 
the Gospel than when he first began to preach. 

One cannot forget that the battle of criticism is raging 
to-day around the inner citadel—the very person and words 
of Jesus. If it can be shown that the Gospels contain only 
very imperfect records of the historical Jesus, and that very 
few sayings of our Lord can be definitely pronounced 
genuine, then, indeed, we might have to give up some of 
the particular passages upon which we have based our 
conception of truth and duty, but nothing less than a 
wholesale denial of the historical existence of Jesus ! would 
demand of us a repudiation of the Christian view of life. 
The ideals, motives, and sentiments—the entire outlook 
and spirit of life which we associate with Christ—are now 
a positive possession of the Christian consciousness. There 
is a Christian view of the world, a Christian Welt-Anschau- 
ung, so living and real in the heart of Christendom that 
even though we had no more reliable basis than the ‘ Nine 
Foundation Pillars ’ which Schmiedel condescends to leave 
us, we should not be wholly deprived of the fundamental 
principles upon which the Christian life might be reared. 


1 As, for example, that of Drew’s Christus Myth, 


32 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


If to these we add the list of ‘doubly attested sayings ’ 
collected by Burkitt, which even some of the most negative 
critics have been constrained to allow, we should at least 
have a starting-point for the study of the teaching of Jesus. 
The most reputable scholars, however, of Germany, America 
and Britain acknowledge that no reasonable doubt can be 
cast upon the general substance and tone of the Synoptic 
Gospels, compiled, as they were, from the ancient Gospel of 
Mark and the source commonly called ‘Q”’ (t.e. the lost 
common origin of the non-Markian portions of Matthew 
and Luke). To these we should be disposed to add the 
Fourth Gospel, which, though a less primary source, un- 
doubtedly records acts and sayings of our Lord attested by 
one, who (whosoever he was) was in close touch with his 
Master’s life, and had drunk deeply of His spirit. 

In the general tone and trend of these writings we find 
abundant materials for what may be called the Ethics of 
Jesus. It is true, no sharp line can be drawn between His 
religious and moral teaching. But, taking Ethics in its 
general sense, as the discussion of the ideals, virtues, duties 
of man, the relation of man to God and to his fellow-men, it 
will at once be seen that a very large portion of Christ’s 
teaching is distinctly ethical. The facts of His own earthly 
existence, all His great miracles, His parables, and above 
all, the Sermon on the Mount, have an immediate bearing 
upon human conduct. They all deal with character, and 
are chiefly illustrations and enforcements of the divine ideal 
of life and of the value of man as a child of God which He 
came to reveal. In the example of Jesus Himself we have 
the best possible illustration of the translation of principles 
into life. And in so far as we find our highest good em- 
bodied in Him, He becomes for us, as J. S. Mill acknow- 
ledged, a kind of personified conscience. No abstract state- 
ment of ethical principles can possibly influence life so 
powerfully as the personal incarnation of these principles ; 
and if the greatest means to the true life is personal associa- 
tion with the high and noble, then it need not seem strange 


1 Cf. Gospel History and its Transmission. 


I1.] THE POSTULATES OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 33 


that love and admiration for the person of Christ have as a 
matter of fact proved the mightiest of historical motives to 
noble living. 

However imperfectly we may know the person of Jesus, 
and however fragmentary may be the record of His teach- 
ing, one great truth looms out of the darkness—-the peerless- 
ness of His character and the incomparableness of His ideal 
of life. He comes to us with a message of Good, new to 
man, based on the great conviction of the Fatherhood of 
God. The all-dominating faith that a genuine seeking 
love is at the heart of the universe makes Jesus certain 
that the laws of the world are the laws of a loving God— 
laws of life which must be studied, welcomed, and heartily 
obeyed. 

2. The Christian ideal, though given in Christ, has to 
be examined, analysed, and applied by the very same 
faculties as are employed in dealing with speculative 
problems. All science must be furnished with facts, and 
its task generally is to shape its materials to definite ends. 
The scientist does not invent. He does not create. He 
simply discovers what is already there: he only moulds 
into form what is given. In like manner, the Christian 
moralist deals with the revelation of life which has been 
granted to him partly in the human consciousness, and 
partly through the sacred scriptures. The scriptures, 
however, do not offer a systematic presentation of the life 
of Christ, or a formal directory of moral conduct. The data 
are supplied, but these data require to be interpreted and 
unified so as to form a system of Ethics. The authority to 
which Christian Ethics appeals is not an external oracle 
which imposes its dictates in a mechanical way. It is an 
authority embodied in intelligible forms, and appealing to 
the rational faculties of man. Christian Ethics, though 
deduced from scripture, is not a cut and dry code of rules 
prescribed by God which man must blindly obey. It has to 
be thought out, and intelligently applied to all the circum- 
stances of life. According to the Protestant view, at least, 
Ethics is not a stereotyped compendium of precepts which 

O 


34 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


the Church supplies to its members to save them from 
thinking. Slavish imitation is wholly foreign to the genius 
of the Gospel. Christ Himself appeals everywhere to the 
rational nature of man, and His words are life and spirit 
only as they are intelligibly apprehended and become by 
inner conviction the principles of action. 

Authoritative, then, as the scriptures are, and Haake Santee 
as they do the revelation of an unique historical fact, they 
do not present a closed or final system of truth. Christ 
has yet many things to say unto us, and the Holy Spirit is 
continually adding new facts to human experience, and 
disclosing richer and fuller manifestations of God through 
history and providence and the personal consciousness of 
man. No progress in thought or life can indeed be made 
which is inconsistent with, or foreign to, the fundamental 
facts which centre in Christ: and we may be justly sus- 
picious of all advancement in doctrine or morals which 
does not flow from the initial truths of the Master’s life 
and teaching. But, just as progress has been made, both 
in the increase of materials of knowledge and in regard 
to the clearer insight and appreciation of the meaning of 
Christian truth, since the apostles’ age, so we may hope 
that, as the ages go on, we shall acquire a still fuller con- 
ception of the kingdom of God and a richer apprehension 
of the divine will. The task and method of Christian 
Ethics will be, consequently, the intelligent interpretation 
and the gradual application to human life and society, in 
all their relationships, of the mind of Christ under the 
constant illumination and guidance of the Divine Spirit. 


111. ] E?HICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 35 


CHAPTER III 
ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 


ApARkT from the writings of the New Testament, which are 
the primary source of Christian Ethics, a comprehensive 
view of our subject would include some account of the 
ethical conceptions of Greece, Rome and Israel, which were 
at least contributory to the Christian idea of the moral life. 
Whatever view we take of its origin, Christianity did not 
come into the world like the goddess Athene, without 
preparation, but was the product of many factors. The 
moral problems of to-day cannot be rightly appreciated 
except in the light of certain concepts which come to us 
from ancient thought; and Greco-Roman philosophy as 
well as Hebrew religion have contributed not a little to 
the form and trend of modern ethical inquiry. 

All we can attempt is the briefest outline, first, of the suc- 
cessive epochs of Greek and Roman Ethics ; and second, 
of the leading moral ideas of the Hebrews as indicating 
the preparatory stages in the evolution of thought which 
finds its completion in the Ethics of Christianity. 


I 


Before the golden age of Greek philosophy there was 
no Ethics in the strictest sense. Philosophy proper occu- 
pied itself primarily with ontological questions—questions 
as to the origin and constitution of the material world. 
It was only when mythology and religion had lost their 
hold upon the cultured, and the traditions of the poets had 
come to be doubted, that inquiries as to the meaning of life 
and conduct arose. 


36 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [oH. 


The Sophists may ‘be regarded as the pioneers of ethical 
science. This body of professional teachers, who appeared 
about the fifth century in Greece, drew attention to the 
vagueness of common opinion and began to teach the art 
of conduct. Of these Protagoras is the most famous, and 
to him is attributed the saying, ‘ Man is the measure of all 
things.’ As applied to conduct, this dictum is commonly 
interpreted as meaning that good is entirely subjective, 
relative to the individual. Viewed in this light the saying 
is one-sided and sceptical, subversive of all objective 
morality. But the dictum may be regarded as expressing 
an important truth, that the good is personal and must ulti- 
mately be the good for man as man, therefore for all men. 

1. It was Socrates, however, who, as it was said, first 
called philosophy from heaven to the sphere of this earth, 
and diverted men’s minds from the consideration of natural 
things to the affairs of human life. He was indeed the first 
moral philosopher, inasmuch as that, while the Sophists 
merely talked at large about justice and virtue, he asked 
what these terms really meant. Living in an age when 
the old guides of life—law and custom—vwere losing their 
hold upon men, he was compelled to find a substitute for 
them by reflection upon the meaning and object of exist- 
ence. For him the source of evil is want of thought, and 
his aim is to awaken men to the realisation of what they 
are, and what they must seek if they would make the best 
of their lives. He is the prophet of clear self-consciousness. 
‘Know thyself’ is his motto, and he maintains that all 
virtue must be founded on such knowledge. A life without 
reflection upon the meaning of existence is unworthy of a 
man.! Hence the famous Socratic dictum, ‘ Virtue is 
knowledge.’ Both negatively and positively Socrates held 
this principle to be true. For, on the one hand, he who is 
not conscious of the good and does not know in what it 
consists, cannot possibly pursue it. And, on the other 
hand, if a man is once alive to his real good, how can he 
do otherwise than pursue it? No one therefore does 


1 Apologia, pp. 38-9. 


int.] ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 37 


wrong willingly. Let a man know what is right, and he 
will do it. Knowledge of virtue is not, however, distinct 
from self-interest. Every one naturally seeks the good 
simply because he sees that the good is identical with his 
ultimate happiness. The wise man is the happy man. 
Hence to know oneself is the secret of well-being. Let each 
be master of himself, knowing what he secks, and seeking 
what he knows—that, for Socrates, is the first principle of 
Ethics, the condition of all moral life. This viewis obviously 
one-sided and essentially individualistic, excluding all those 
forms of morality which are pursued unconsciously, and are 
due more to the influence of intuitive perception and social 
habit than to clear and definite knowledge. The merit of 
Socrates, however, lies in his demand for ethical reflection, 
and his insistence upon man not only acting rightly, but 
acting from the right motive. 

2. While Socrates was the first to direct attention to the 
nature of virtue, it received from Plato a more systematic 
treatment. Platonic philosophy may be described as an 
extension to the universe of the principles which Socrates 
applied to the life of the individual. Plato attempts to 
define the end of man by his place in the cosmos ; and by 
bringing Ethics into connection with Metaphysics he asks 
What is the idea of man as a part of universal reality ? 
Two main influences combined to produce his conception 
of virtue. First, in opposition to the Heraclitean doctrine 
of perpetual change, he contended for something real and 
permanent. Second, in antagonism to the Sophistic theory 
of the conventional origin of the moral law, he maintained 
that man’s chief end was the good which was fixed in the 
eternal nature of things, and did not consist in the pursuit 
of transient pleasures. Hence, in two respects, Plato goes 
beyond Socrates. He puts opinion, which is his name for 
ordinary consciousness, between ignorance and knowledge, 
ascribing to it a certain measure of truth, and making it the 
starting-point for reflection. And further, he transforms 
the Socratic idea of morality, rejecting the notion that its 
principle is to be found in a mere calculation of pleasures, 


38 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


and maintaining that particular goods must be estimated 
by the good of life as a whole. Plato’s philosophy rests 
upon his doctrine of ideas, which, as the types of permanent 
reality, represent the eternal nature of things; and the 
problem of life is to rise from opinion to truth, from appear- 
ance to reality, and attain to the ideal principle of unity. 
The highest good Plato identifies with God, and man’s end 
is ultimately to be found in the knowledge of, and com- 
munion with, the eternal. 

The human soul he conceived to be a mixture of two ele- 
ments. In virtue of its higher spiritual nature it parti- 
cipates in the world of ideas, the life of God: and in virtue 
of its lower or animal impulses, in the corporeal world of 
decay. These two dissimilar parts are connected by an 
intermediate element called by Plato @vucos or courage, 
implying the emotions or affections of the heart. Hence a 
threefold constitution of the soul is conceived—the rational 
powers, the emotional desires, and the animal passions. If 
we ask who is the good man? Plato answers, it is the 
man in whom these three elements are harmonised. On 
the basis of this psychology Plato classifies and determines 
the virtues—adopting the four cardinal virtues of Greek 
tradition as the fundamental types of morality. Wisdom 
is the quality, or condition of all virtue and the crown of 
the moral life : courage is the virtue of the emotional part 
of man ; temperance or moderation, the virtue of the lower 
appetites : while justice is the unity and the principle of 
the others. Virtue is thus no longer identified with know- 
ledge simply. Another source of vice besides ignorance is 
assumed, viz., the disorder and conflict of the soul; and 
the well-being of man lies in the attainment of a well- 
ordered and harmonious life. As health is the harmony of 
the body, so virtue is the harmony of the soul—a condition 
of perfection in which every desire is kept in control and 
every function performs its part with a view to the good 
of the whole. Morality, however, does not belong merely 
to the individual, but has its perfect realisation in the state 
in which the three elements of the soul have their counter- 


II. ] ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 39 


part in the threefold rank of society. Man is indeed but 
a type of a larger cosmos, and it is not as an individual but 
as a citizen that he finds his station and duties, and is 
capable of realising his true life. 

Thus we see how Plato is led to correct the shortcomings 
of Socrates—his abrupt distinction between ignorance and 
knowledge, his vagueness as to the meaning of the good, 
and his tendency to emphasise the subjective side of virtue 
and withdraw the individual from the community of which 
he is essentially a part. But in developing his theory of 
ideas Plato has represented the true life of man as consisting 
in the knowledge of, and indeed in absorption in, God, a 
state to which man can only attain by the suppression of 
his natural impulses and withdrawal from earthly life: and 
though there is not wanting in Plato’s later teaching the 
higher conception of the transformation of the animal 
passions, he is not wholly successful in overcoming the 
dualism between impulse and reason which besets some of 
the earlier dialogues. 

It is a striking proof of the vitality of Plato that his 
teaching has affected every form of idealism and has helped 
to shape the history of religious thought in all ages. Not 
only many of the early Fathers, such as Clement and Origen, 
but the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria, the Cambridge 
Platonists of the seventeenth century, and also the German 
theologians, Baur and Schleiermacher, have recognised 
numerous coincidences between Christianity and Platonism: 
as Bishop Westcott has said, ‘ Plato points to St. John.’ 
His influence may be detected in some of the greatest 
Christian poetry of our own country, especially in that of 
Wordsworth and Tennyson. For Plato believes, in common 
with the greatest of every age, in ‘ that inborn passion for 
perfection,’ that innate though often unconscious yearning 
after the true, the beautiful, the good, 

‘Those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things,’ 
which are the heritage of human nature. 
1 Cf, Adam, Vitality of Platenism, p. 3. 


40 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


3. The Ethics of Aristotle does not essentially differ from 
that of Plato. He is the first to treat of morals formally 
as a science, which, however, in his hands becomes a division 
of politics. Man, says Aristotle, is really a social animal. 
Even more decisively than Plato, therefore, he treats man 
as a part of society) While in Plato there is the foreshadow- 
ing of the truth that the goal of moral endeavour lies in 
godlikeness, with Aristotle the goal is confined to this life 
and is conceived simply as the earthly well-being of the 
moral subject. ‘ Death,’ he declares, ‘ is the greatest of all 
evils, for it is the end.’ Aristotle begins his great work on 
Ethics with the discussion of the chief good, which he declares 
to be happiness or well-being. But happiness does not 
consist in sensual pleasure, nor even in the pursuit of 
honour, but in an ‘ activity of the soul in accordance with 
reason.’ 1 There are required for this life of right thinking 
and right doing not only suitable environment but proper 
instruction. Virtue is not virtuous until it is a habit, and 
the only way to be virtuous is to practise virtue. To be 
virtuous a man’s conduct must be a law for him, the regular 
expression of his will. Hence the virtues are habits of 
deliberate choice, and not natural endowments. Follow- 
ing Plato, Aristotle sees that there is in man a number of 
impulses struggling for the mastery of the soul, hence he is 
led to assume that the natural instincts need guidance and 
control. Moderation is therefore the one chief virtue; 
and moral excellence consists in an activity which at every 
point seeks to strike a ‘mean’ between two opposite 
excesses. Virtue in general, then, may be defined as the 
observation of the due mean in action. Aristotle also 
follows Plato in assigning the ideal good to contemplation, 
and in exalting the life of reason and speculation above all 
others. In thus idealising the contemplative life he was 
but reflecting the spirit of his race. This apotheosis of 
knowledge infected all Greek thought, and found exag- 
gerated expression in the religious absorption of Neo- 
Platonism. 

1 Nic, Ethics, bk. i, chap. 5. 


II.) ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 4] 


Without dwelling further upon the ethical philosophy of 
Aristotle, a defect which at once strikes a modern in regard 
to his scheme of virtues is that’ benevolence is not recog- 
nised, except obscurely as a form of magnanimity; and 

_that, in general, the gentler virtues, so prominent in Chris- 

 tianity, have little place in the list. ~)»The virtues are chiefly 
aristocratic. Favourable conditiéns are needed for their 
‘cultivation. They are not possible for a slave, and hardly 
for those engaged in ‘ mercenary occupations.’!/ Further, 
it may be remarked that habit of itself does not make a 
man virtuous. Morality cannot consist in a mere succes- 
sion of customary acts. ‘One good custom would corrupt 
the world,’ and habit is frequently a hindrance rather than 
a help to the moral life. / But the main defect of Aristotle’s \ 
treatment of virtue is that he tends to regard the passions \ 
as irrational, and he does not see that passions if wholly © 
evil could have no ‘mean.’ Reason pervades all the lower 
appetites of man: and the instincts and desires, instead 
of being treated as elements which must be suppressed, 
ought to be regarded rather as powers to be transformed 
and employed as vehicles of the moral life. At the same 
time there are not wanting passages in Aristotle as well as 
in Plato which, instead of emphasising the avoidance of 
excess, regard virtue as consisting in complementary ele- 
ments—the addition of one virtuous characteristic to 
another—‘ that balance of contrasted qualities which meets 
us at every turn in the distinguished personalities of the 
Hellenic race, and which is too often thought of in a merely 
negative way, as the avoidance of excess rather than as the 
highest outcome of an intense and many-sided vitality.’ ? 

4, After Aristotle philosophy rapidly declined, and Ethics 
degenerated into popular moralising which manifested 
itself chiefly in a growing depreciation of good as the end 


1 wicOapyixal épyacia:, Arist., Politics, iii. ‘There is nothing common 
between a master and his slave,’ Nic. Hthics, viii. 

2 Butcher, Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects, quoted by Barbour, 
Philos. Study of Christian Ethics, p.11. Cf. also Burnet, Lthics of Aristotle, 
p. 73. ‘The ‘‘mean” is really the true nature of the soul when fully 
developed,’ 


49 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (cx. 


of life. The conflicting elements of reason and impulse, 
which neither Plato nor Aristotle succeeded in harmonising, 
gave rise ultimately to two opposite interpretations of the 
moral life. The Stotcs selected the rational nature as the 
true guide to an ethical system, but they gave to it a 
supremacy so rigid as to threaten the extinction of the 
affections. The Hpicureans, on the other hand, fastening 
upon the emotions as the measure of truth, emphasised the 
happiness of the individual as the chief good—a doctrine 
which led some of the followers of Epicurus to justify even 
sensual enjoyment. It is not necessary to dwell upon the 
details of Epicureanism, for though its description of the 
‘wise man,’ as that of a person who prudently steered a 
middle course between passion and asceticism, was one 
which exercised considerable influence upon the morals of 
the age, it is the doctrines of Stoicism which more especially 
have come into contact with Christianity. Without dis- 
cussing the Stoic conception of the world as interpenetrated 
and controlled by an inherent spirit, and the consequent 
view of life as proceeding from God and being in all its 
parts equally divine, we may note that the Stoics, under 
the influence of Platonism, regarded self-realisation as the 
true end of man. ‘This idea they expressed in the formula, 
‘ Life according to nature.’ The wise man is he who seeks 
to live in all the circumstances of life in agreement with his 
rational nature. The law of nature is to avoid what is 
hurtful and strive for what is appropriate. Pleasure, 
though not the immediate object of man, arises as an accom- 
paniment of a well-ordered life. Pleasure and pain are, 
however, really accidents, to be met by the wise man with 
indifference. He alone is free who acknowledges the 
absolute supremacy of reason and makes himself independ- 
ent of earthly desires. This life of freedom is open to ali: 
since all men are members of one body. ‘The slave may be 
as free as the consul, and in every station of life each may 
make the world serve him by living in harmony with it. 
There is a certain sublimity in the ethics of Stoicism 
which has always appealed to noble minds. ‘ It inspired,’ 


11. ] ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 43 


says Mr. Lecky, ‘nearly all the great characters of the 
early Roman Empire, and nerved every attempt to main- 
tain the dignity and freedom of the human soul.’? But 
we cannot close our eyes to its defects. Divine providence, 
though frequently dwelt upon, signified little more for the 
Stoic than destiny or fate. Harmony with nature was 
simply a sense of proud self-sufficiency. Stoicism is the 
glorification of reason, even to the extent of suppressing 
all emotion. Sin is unreason, and salvation lies in an 
external control of the passions—in indifference and apathy 
begotten of the subordination of desire to reason. 

The chief merit of Stoicism is that in an age of moral 
degeneracy it insisted upon the necessity of integrity in all 
the conditions of life. In its preference for the joys of the 
inner life and its scorn of the delights of sense; in its 
emphasis upon individual responsibility and duty ; above 
all, in its advocacy of a common humanity and its belief 
in the relation of each human soul to God, Roman Stoicism, 
as revealed in the writings of a Seneca, an Epictetus, and a 
Marcus Aurelius, not only showed how high Paganism at 
its best could reach, but proved in a measure a preparation 
for Christianity, with whose practical truths it had much in 
common. 

The affinities between Stoicism and Paulinism have been 
frequently pointed out, and the similarity in language and 
thought can scarcely be accounted for by coincidence. 
There are, however, elements in Stoicism which St. Paul 
would never have dreamt of assimilating. The material 
conception of the world, the self-conscious pride, the 
absence of all sense of sin, the temper of apathy, and un- 
natural suppression of feelings were ideas which could not 
but rouse the apostle’s strongest antagonism. But, on 
the other hand, there were characteristics of a nobler order 
in Stoic morality which, we may well believe, Paul found 
ready to his hand and did not hesitate to incorporate in 
his teaching. Of these we may mention, the Immanence 
of God, the idea of Wisdom, the conception of freedom as 


1 Hist. of Hurop. Morals, vol. i. chap. ii, 


44. CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


the prerogative of the individual, and the notion of brother- 
hood as the goal of humanity. 

The Roman Stoics, notwithstanding their theoretic 
interest in moral questions, lived in an ideal world, and 
hardly attempted to bring their views into connection with 
the facts of life. Their philosophy was a refuge from the 
evil around them rather than an effort to remove it. They 
seek to overcome the world by being indifferent to it. In 
Neo-Platonism—the last of the Greek schools of philosophy 
—this tendency to withdraw from life and its problems 
becomes still more marked. Absorption in God is the goal 
of existence and the essence of religion. ‘ Man is left alone 
with God without any world to mediate between them, and 
in the ecstatic vision of the Absolute the light of reason 
is extinguished.’ ? 

Meagre as our sketch of ancient thought has necessarily 
been, it is perhaps enough to show that the debt of religion 
to Greek and Roman Ethics is incalculable. It lifted man 
above vague wonder, and gave him courage to define his 
relation to existence. It caused him to ask questions of 
experience, and awakened him to the value of life and the 
meaning of freedom, duty, and good. Finally, it brought 
into view those contrasted aims of life and society which 
find their solution in the Christian ideal.8 


II 


Christianity stands in the closest relation with Hebrew 
religion. Much as the philosophy of Greece and Rome 
have contributed to Christendom, there is no such intimate 
relation between them as that which connects Christian 
Ethics with the morality of Israel. Christ Himself, and 
still more the Apostle Paul, assumed as a substratum of 


1 See Author's Hthics of St. Paul for further discussion of relation of Paul 
to Stoics. 
a Cf. E. Caird, Hvolution of Theology in the Greek Philosophers, vol. i. p. 
48. 
3 Of. Caird, idem. Pfleiderer, Vorbereitung des Christentumsin der Griech. 
Philos. ; Wenley, Preparation for Christianity. 


111.] ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 45 


their teaching the revelation which had been granted to 
the Jews. The moral and religious doctrines comprehended 
under the designation of the ‘law’ served, as the apostle 
said, as a ma:Saywyds or usher whose function it was to 
lead them to the school of Christ. 

At the outset we are impressed by the fact that the 
Ethics of Judzeism was inseparable from its religion. Moral 
' obligations were conceived as divine commands, and the 
moral law as a revelation of the divine will. At first 
Jehovah was simply a tribal deity, but gradually this 
restricted view gave place to the wider conception of God 
as the sovereign of all men. The divine commandment is 
the criterion and measure of man’s obedience. Evil, while 
it has its source and head in a hostile but subsidiary power, 
consists in violation of Jehovah’s will. 

There are three main channels of Hebrew revelation, 
commonly known as the Law, the Prophecy, and Poetry of 
Old Testament. 


1. Law 


(1) The Mosaic Legislation centering in the Decalogue } 
is the first stage of Old Testament Ethic. The ten com- 
mandments, whether derived from Mosaic enactment or 
representing a later summary of duty, hold a supreme and 
formative place in the teaching of the Old Testament. 
All, not even excepting the fourth, are purely moral re- 
quirements. They are, however, largely negative; the 
fifth commandment only rising to positive duty. They are 
also merely external, regulative of outward conduct. The 
sixth and seventh protect the rights of persons, while the 
* eighth guards outward property. Though these laws may 
be shown to have their roots in the moral consciousness of 
mankind, they were at first restricted by Israel in their 
scope and practice to its own tribes. 

(2) The Civil laws present a second factor in the ethical 
education of Israel. The ‘ Book of the Covenant’? reveals 
a certain advancement in political legislation. Still the 


1 Exod, xx.; Deut, v. 2 Ex, xx,-xxiii, 


46 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS {cH. 


hard and legal enactments of retaliation—‘ An eye for an 
eye and a tooth for a tooth ’—disclose a barbarous con- 
ception of right. Alongside of these primitive laws must 
be set those of a more humane nature—laws with regard 
to release, the permission of gleaning, the at ak of the 
year of jubilee. 

(3) The Ceremonial laws embody a third sleeate in the 
moral life of Israel. These had to do chiefly with commands 
and prohibitions relative to personal conduct—‘ Meats and 
drinks and diverse washings’; and with sacrifices and 
forms of ritual worship. 

With regard to the moral value of the commandments 
two opposite errors are to be avoided. We must not 
refuse to recognise in the Old Testament the record of a 
true, if elementary and imperfect, revelation of God. But 
also we must beware of exalting the commandments of the 
Old Dispensation to the level of those of the New; and 
thus misunderstanding the nature and relation of both. 

The Christian faith is in a sense the development of 
Judaism, though itis infinitely more. The commandments 
of Moses, in so far as they have their roots in the constitu- 
tion of man, have not been superseded, but taken up and 
spiritualised by the Ethic of the Gospel. 


2. PROPHECY 


The dominant factor of Old Testament Ethics lay in the 
influence exerted by the prophets. They, and not the 
priests, are the great moralists of Israel. The prophets 
were speakers for God, the interpreters of His will. They 
were the moral guides of the people, the champions of 
integrity in political life, not less than witnesses for indi- 
vidual purity.? 

We may sum up the ethical significance of the Hebrew 
prophets in three features. 

(1) They were preachers of personal righteousness. In 


1 Amos v. 25 ; Hos, vi. 6; Isa. i. 11-13. 
2 Cf. Wallace, Lectures and Essay yson Natural Theol. and Ethics, p. 188. 


m1.] ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 47 


times of falsehood and hypocrisy they were witnesses for 
integrity and truth, upholding the personal virtues of 
justice, sincerity, and mercy against the idolatry and 
formalism of the priesthood. ‘ What doth the Lord require 
of thee,’ said Micah, ‘ but to do justly, to love mercy, and 
to walk humbly with thy God.’! In the same strain 
Isaiah exclaimed, ‘ Bring no more vain oblations, but wash 
you and make you clean.’? And so also Habakkuk has 
affirmed in words which became the keynote of Paul’s 
theology and the watchword of the Reformation—‘ The 
just shall live by faith.’ % 

(2) They were the advocates of the rights of man, of 
equity and justice between man and man. ‘They denounce 
the tyranny of kings, and the luxury of the nobles. They 
protest against the oppression of the poor and befriend the 
toilers of the cities. They proclaim the worth of man as 
man. They reveal Jehovah as the God of the common 
people, and seek to mitigate the burdens which lie upon 
the enslaved and down-trodden. 

(3) They were the apostles of Hope. Not only did they 
seek to lift their fellow-men above their present calamities, 
but they proclaimed a message of peace and triumph which 
was to be evolved out of trouble. A great promise gradu- 
ally loomed on the horizon, and hope began to centre in 
an anointed Deliverer. The Hebrew prophets were not 
probably conscious of the full significance of their own 
predictions. Like all true poets, they uttered greater 
things than they knew. The prophet who most clearly 
outlines this truth is the second Isaiah. As he looks down 
the ages he sees that healing is to be brought about through 
suffering, the suffering of a Sinless one. Upon this myster- 
ious figure who is to rise up in the latter days is to be laid 
the burden of humanity. No other, not even St. Paul 
himself, has grasped so clearly the great secret of atone- 
ment or given so touching a picture of the power of vicarious 
suffering as this unknown prophet of Israel. 


1 Micah vi. 8, 2 Isa, i. 18-17 ; Micah vi, 7, 
3 Hab. ii. 4; cf. Rom. i. 17; Gal. iii, 2, 


48 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


3. THE PoETICcCAL Books 


Passing from the prophets to the poets of Israel—and 
especially to the book of Psalms—the devotional manual 
of the people, reflecting the moral and religious life of the 
nation at the various stages of its development—we find 
the same exalted character of God as a God of Righteous- 
ness, hating evil and jealous for devotion, the same profound 
sense of sin and the same high vocation of man. The 
Hebrew nation was essentially a poetic people,! and their 
literature is full of poetry. But poetry is not systematic. 
It is not safe, therefore, to deduce particular tenets of faith 
or moral principles from passages which glow with intensity 
of feeling. But if a nation’s character is revealed in its 
songs, the deep spirituality and high moral tone of Israel 
are clearly reflected in that body of religious poetry which 
extends over a period of a thousand years, from David to 
the Maccabean age. It is at once national and personal, 
and is a wonderful record of the human heart in its various 
moods and yearnings. - Underlying all true poetry there isa 
philosophy of life. God, for the Hebrew psalmist, is the 
one pervading presence. He is not a mere impersonation 
of the powers of nature, but a personal Being, righteous 
and merciful, with whom man stands in the closest relations. 
Holy and awful, indeed, hating iniquity and exacting 
punishment upon the wicked, He is also tender and pitiful— 
a Father of the oppressed, who bears their burdens, forgives 
their iniquities, and crowns them with tender mercy.* All 
nature speaks to the Hebrew of God. He is no far-oft 
creator, but immanent in all His works.? He presides over 
mankind, and provides for the manifold wants of his 
creatures. It is this thought which gives unity to the 
nation, and binds the tribes into a common brotherhood. 
God is their personal friend. In war and peace, in worship 
and labour, at home and in exile, it is to Jehovah they look 


1 Though Houston Chamberlain, in his recent work, The Foundations of 
the Nineteenth Century, maintains that they were ‘a most prosaic, materalistic 
people, without any real sense of poetry.’ 

2 Ps. 51. 3 Ps. 19. 


Il. ] ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 49 


for strength and light and joy. He is their Shepherd and 
Redeemer, under whose wings they trust. Corresponding 
to this sublime faith, the virtues of obedience and fidelity 
are dwelt upon, while the ideal of personal righteousness 
and purity is constantly held forth. It is no doubt largely 
temporal blessings which the psalmists emphasise, and the 
rewards of integrity are chiefly those of material and 
earthly prosperity. The hope of the future life is nowhere 
clearly expressed in the Old Testament, and while in the 
Psalter here and there a dim yearning for a future with 
God breaks forth, hardly any of these poems illumine the 
destiny of man beyond the grave. The hope of Israel was 
limited mostly to this earth. The land beyond the shadows 
does not come within their purview. Like a child, the 
psalmist is content to know that his divine Father is near 
him here and now. When exactly the larger hope emerged 
we cannot say. But gradually, with the breaking up of 
the national life and under the pressure of suffering, a 
clearer vision dawned. With the limitations named, it is a 
sublime outlook upon life and a high-toned morality which 
the Psalter discloses. Poetry, indeed, idealises, and no 
doubt the Israelites did not always live up to their aspira- 
tions; but men who could give utterance to a faith so 
clear, to a penitence so deep, and to longings so lofty and 
spiritual as these Psalms contain are not the least among 
the heralds of the kingdom of Christ. 

We cannot enlarge upon the ethical ideas of the other 
writings of the Old Testament, the books of Wisdom, 
Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. Their teaching, while not 
particularly lofty, is generally healthy and practical, con- 
sisting of homely commonplaces and shrewd observations 
upon life and conduct. The motives appealed to are not 
always the highest, and frequently have regard only to 
earthly prosperity and worldly policy. It must not, how- 
ever, be overlooked that moral practice is usually allied 
with the fear of God, and the right choice of wisdom is 
represented as the dictate of piety not less than the sanction 
of prudence. The writers of the Wisdom literature are the 


50 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


humanists of their age. As distinguished from the idealism 
of the prophets, they are realists who look at life in a some- 
what utilitarian way. With the prophets, however, they 
are at one in regarding the inferiority of ceremonial to 
obedience and sincerity. God is the ruler of the world, 
and man’s task is to live in obedience to Him. What God 
requires is correct outward behaviour, self-restraint, and 
consideration of others. 

In estimating the Ethics of Israel the fact that it was a 
preparatory stage in the revelation of God’s will must not be 
overlooked. We are not surprised, therefore, that, judged by 
the absolute standard of the New Testament, the morality 
of the Old Testament must be pronounced imperfect. In 
two respects at least, in intent and extent, it is deficient. 

(1) It is lacking in Depth. There is a tendency to dwell 
upon the sufficiency of external acts rather than the neces- 
sity of inward disposition. At the same time, in the 
Psalter and prophecy inward purity is recognised.! Further, 
the character of Jehovah is sometimes presented in a 
repellent aspect; as in the threatenings of the second 
commandment ; the treatment of the children of Achan and 
the Sons of Korah ; the seeming injustice of God, implied 
in the complaint of Moses, and the protests of Abraham 
and David. But again there are not wanting more kindly 
features of the Divine Being ; and the Fatherhood of God 
finds frequent expression. Though the penal code is severe, 
a gentler spirit shines through many of its provisions, and 
protection is afforded to the wage-earner, the dependent, 
and the poor; while the care of slaves, foreigners, and 
even lower animals is not overlooked.? Again, it has been 
noticed that the motives to which the Old Testament 
appeals are often mercenary. Material prosperity plays 
an important part as an inducement to well-doing. The 
good which the pious patriarch or royal potentate contem- 
plates is something which is calculated to enrich himself or 
advance his people. But here we must not forget that 


1 Ps, 51; Isa, 1. 
2 Deut. xxiv. 14, 15; Jer. xxii. 13-17; Matt. iii. 5; Deut. xxv. 4. 


III. ] ETHICAL THOUGHT BEFORE CHRIST 51 


God’s revelation is progressive, and His dealing with man 
educative. There is naturally a certain accommodation of 
the divine law to the various stages of the moral appre- 
hension of the Jewish people. Gradually the nation is being 
carried forward by the promise of material benefits to the 
deeper and more inward appreciation of spiritual blessings. 

(2) It is lacking in Scope. In regard to universality the 
Hebrew ideal, it must be acknowledged, is deficient. God 
is usually represented as the God of Israel alone, and not 
as the God of all men, and the obligations of veracity, 
honesty, and mercy are confined within the limits of the 
nation. It is true that a prominent commandment given 
to Israel and endorsed by our Lord runs thus : ‘ Thou shalt 
love thy neighbour as thyself.’! But the extent of the 
obligation seems to be restricted by the context: ‘Thou 
shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children 
of thy people.’ It is contended that the word translated 
“neighbour ’ bears a wider import than the English term, 
and is really applicable to any person. The larger idea is 
expressed in vv. 33, 34, where the word ‘stranger’ or 
‘foreigner’ is substituted for neighbour. And there are 
passages in which the stranger is regarded as the special 
client of God, and is enjoined to look to Him for protection. 

The Jews were not in practice, however, faithful to the 
humanitarianism of their law, and, in keeping with other 
nations, showed a tendency to restrict divine favours within 
the limits of their own land, and to maintain throughout 
their history an attitude of aloofness and repellent isolation 
which even amounted to intolerance towards other races. 
In early days, however, the obligation of hospitality was 
regarded as sacred.2, Nor must we forget that, whatever 
may have been the Jewish practice, the promise enshrined 
in their revelation involves the unity of mankind; while 
several of the prophecies and Psalms look forward to a 
world-wide blessing. In Isaiah we even read, ‘ God of the 
whole earth shall He be called.’ 4 


1 Lev, xix. 18. 2 Gen. xviii. xix. 
8 Isa. lxi.; Ps. xxii. 27; xlviii, 2-10; lxxxvii. 4 Isa, liv. 5, 


52 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. III. 


The stream of preparation for Christianity thus flowed 
steadily through three channels, the Greek, the Roman, and 
the Jew. Each contributed something to the fullness of 
the time. 

The problem of Greek civilisation was the problem of 
freedom, the realisation of self-dependence and self-deter- 
mination. In the pursuit of these ends Greece garnered 
conclusions which are the undying possessions of the world. 
If to the graces of self-abasement, meekness and charity it 
remained a stranger, it gave a new worth to the individual, 
and showed that without the virtues of wisdom, courage, 
steadfastness and justice man could not attain to moral 
character. 

The Roman’s gift was unbending devotion to duty. 
With a genius for rule he forced men into one polity ; and 
by levelling material barriers he enabled the nations to 
commune, and made a highway for the message of freedom 
and brotherhood. But, intoxicated with material glory, 
he became blind to spiritual good, and in his universal 
toleration he emptied all faiths of their content, driving the 
masses to superstition, and the few who yearned for a 
higher life to withdrawal from the world. 

_ The Jewish contribution was righteousness. Not speci- 
ally distinguished by intellectual powers, nor gifted in 
political enterprise, his endowment was spiritual insight, 
and by his dispersion throughout the world he made others 
the sharers of his inheritance. But his tendency was to 
keep his privilege to himself, or so to load it with legal 
restrictions as to bar its acceptance for strangers ; and in 
his pride of isolation he failed to recognise his Deliverer 
when He came. 

Thus, negatively and positively, by failure and by partial 
attainment, the world was prepared for Him who was the 
desire of all nations. In Christ were gathered up the 
wisdom of the Greek, the courage of the Roman, the 
righteousness of the Jew ; and He who came not to destroy 
but to fulfil at once interpreted and satisfied the longings 
of the ages. 





SECTION B ria 
PERSONALITY ii 





ye: 
ARAL 
ay 





CHAPTER IV 
THE ESTIMATE OF MAN 


Havine thus far laid the foundations of our study by a ~ 
discussion of its presuppositions and sources, we are now 
prepared to consider man as the personal subject of the 
new life. The spirit of God which takes hold of man and 
renews his life must not be conceived as a foreign power 
breaking the continuity of consciousness. The natural is 
the basis of the supernatural. It is not a new personality © 
which is created; it is the old that is transformed and 
completed. If there was not already implicit in man that 
which predisposed him for the higher life, a consciousness 
to which the spirit could appeal, then Christianity would 
be simply a mechanical or magical influence without ethical 
significance and having no relation to the past history of 
the individual. But that is not the teaching of our Lord 
or of His apostles. We are bound, therefore, to assume 
a certain substratum of powers, physical, mental and 
moral, as constituting the raw material of which the new 
personality is formed. The spirit of God does not quench 


the natural faculties of man, but works through and ate ve f 


them, raising them to a higher value.! 

1. But before proceeding to a consideration of these 
elements of human consciousness to which Christianity 
appeals, we must glance at two opposite theories of human 
nature, either of which, if the complete view of man, would 
be inimical to Christianity.” 


1 See Author’s Ethics of St. Paul. 
2 Cf. Murray, Handbook of Christian Ethics. See also. Hegel, Phil. der 
Religion, vol. ii. p, 210 ff., where the antithesis is finely worked out. 
55 


56 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


1. The first view is that man by nalure ts morally good. 
His natural impulses are from birth wholly virtuous, and 
require only to be left to their own operation to issue in a 
life of perfection. Those who favour this contention claim 
the support of Scripture. Not only does the whole tone 
of the Bible imply the inherent goodness of primitive man, 
but many texts both in the Old and New Testaments sug- 
gest that God made man upright.1 Among the Greeks, 
and especially the Stoics, this view prevailed. All nature 
was regarded as the creation of perfect reason, and the 
primitive state as one of uncorrupted innocence. Pelagius 
espoused this doctrine, and it continued to influence dog- 
matic theology not only in the form of Semi-Pelagianism, 
but even as modifying the severer tenets of Augustine. 
The theory received fresh importance during the revolution- 
ary movement of the eighteenth century, and found a 
strong exponent in Rousseau. ‘Let us sweep away all 
conventions and institutions of man’s making and get back 
to the simplicity of a primitive age.’ The man of nature is 
guileless, and his natural instincts would preserve him in 
uncorrupted purity if they were not perverted by the arti- 
ficial usages of society. So profoundly did this theory 
dominate the thoughts of men that its influence may be 
detected not only in the political fanaticism which found 
expression in the French Revolution, but also in the prac- 
tical views of the Protestant Church acting as a deterrent 
to missionary effort.2, This view of human nature, though 
not perhaps formally stated, finds expression in much of the 
literature of the present day. Professor James cites Theo- 
dore Parker and other leaders of the liberal movement in 
New England of last century as representatives of the 
tendency.’ These writers do not wholly ignore moral 
effect, but they make light of sin, and regard it not as 
something positive, but merely as a stage in the develop- 
ment of man. 

Gen. i. 26; Eccles. vii. 29; Col. iii. 10; James iii. 9. 


1 i 
2 See Hugh Miller's Hssays, quoted by Murray, op. cit., p. 137. 
3 Cf. W. James, Varieties of Religious Haperience, pp. 81-86. 


IV. ] THE ESTIMATE OF MAN 57 


2. The other theory of human nature goes to the oppo- 
site extreme. Man by nature is witterly depraved, and his 
natural instincts are wholly bad. ‘Those who take this view 
also appeal to Scripture: ‘ Man is shapen in iniquity and 
conceived in sin.” Many passages in the New Testament, 
and especially in the writings of St. Paul, seem to empha- 
sise the utter degradation of man. It was not, however, 
until the time of Augustine that this idea of innate depravity 
was formulated into a doctrine. The Augustinean dogma 
has coloured all later theology. In the Roman Catholic 
Church, even in such a writer as Pascal, and in Protestant- 
ism, under the influence of Calvin, the complete corruption 
of man’s nature has been depicted in the blackest hues. 

These theories of human nature represent aspects of 
truth, and are false only in their isolation. 

The doctrine that man is innocent by nature is not in 
agreement with history. Nowhere is the noble savage to 
be found. The primitive man exhibits the same tendencies 
as his more civilised neighbour, and his animal passions are 
indulged without control of reason or consideration for 
others. Indeed, Hobbes’s view of early society as a state 
of war and rapacity is much truer to fact than Rousseau’s. 
The noble savage is simply a fiction of the imagination, aa 
abstraction obtained by withdrawing him from all social 
environment. But even could we conceive of a hurnan 
being kept from infancy in isolation, he would not fulfil the 
true idea of virtue, but would simply develop into a negative 
creature, a mutilated being bereft of all that constitutes 
our notion of humanity. Such experiences as are possible 
only in society—all forms of goodness as suggested by such 
words as ‘love,’ ‘sympathy,’ ‘service’—would never 
emerge at all. The native instincts of man are simply 
potencies or capacities for morality ; they must have a life 
of opportunity for their evolution and exercise. The 
abstract self prior to and apart from all objective experience 
is an illusion. It is only in relation to a world of mora! 
beings that the moral life becomes possible for man. The 
innocence which the advocates of this theory contend for is 


58 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


something not unlike the non-rational existence of the 
animal. Itis true that the brute is notimmoral, but neither 
is it moral. ‘The whole significance of the passions as they 
exist in man lies in the fact that they are not purely animal, 
but, since they belong to man, are always impregnated with 
reason. It is reason that gives to them their moral worth, 
and it is because man must always put his self into every 
desire or impulse that it becomes the instrument either of 
virtue or of vice.} 

But if the theory of primitive purity is untenable, not 
less so is that of innate depravity. Here, also, its advocates 
are not consistent with themselves. Even the systems of 
theology derived from Augustine do not contend that man 
was created with an evil propensity. His sin was the result 
of an historical catastrophe. In his paradisiacal condition 
man is conceived as possessing a nobility and innocence of 
nature far beyond that even which Rousseau depicted. 
Milton, in spite of his Calvinistic puritanism, has painted a 
picture of man’s ideal innocence which for idyllic charm is 
unequalled in literature.2_ Nor does historical inquiry bear 
out the theory of the utter depravity of man. The latest 
anthropological research into the condition of primitive 
man suggests rather that even the lowest forms of savage 
life are not without some dim consciousness of a higher 
power and some latent capacity for good.? Finally, these 
writers are not more successful when they claim the support 
of the Bible. Not only are there many examples of virtue 
in patriarchal times, but, as we have seen, there are not a 
few texts which imply the natural goodness of man. Our 
Lord repeatedly assumes the affinity with goodness of those 
who had not hitherto come into contact with the Gospel, 
as in the case of Jairus, the rich young ruler, and the Syro- 
phenician woman. It has been affirmed by Wernle 4 that 
the Apostle Paul in the interests of salvation grossly 

1 Cf. Goethe’s Faust. See also Nietzsche, Gétzendimmerung for trenchant 
criticism of Rousseau. 
2 Murray, idem. 


3 Max Miiller, Fraser, Golden Bough, and others, 
4 Anfinge des Christentums. 


Iv.] THE ESTIMATE OF MAN 59 


exaggerates the condition of the natural man. ‘ He vio- 
lently extinguished every other light in the world so that 
Jesus might shine in it alone.’ But this surely is a mis- 
statement. It is true that no more scathing denunciation 
of sinful human nature has ever been presented than the 
account of heathen immorality to be found in the first 
chapter of Romans. Yet the apostle does not actually 
affirm, nor even imply, that pagan society was so utterly 
corrupt that it had lost all knowledge of moral good. 
Though so bad as to be beyond hope of recovery by natural 
effort, it was not so bad as to have quenched in utter dark- 
ness the light which lighteth every man. 

3. Christianity, while acknowledging the partial truth 
of both of these theories, reconciles them. If, on the one 
hand, man were innately good and could of himself attain 
to righteousness, there would be no need of a gospel of 
renewal. But history and experience alike show that that 
is not the case. If, on the other hand, man were wholly 
bad, had no susceptibility for virtue and truth, then there 
would be nothing in him, as we have seen, which could 
respond to the Christian appeal.! Christianity alone offers 
an answer to the question in which Pascal presents the great 
antithesis of human nature: ‘If man was not made for 
God, how is it that he can be happy only in God? And ii 
he is made for God, how is he so opposite to God?’ ? 
However, then, we may account for the presence of evil in 
human nature, a true view of Christianity involves the 
conception of a latent spiritual element in man, a capacity 
for goodness to which his whole being points. Matter itself 
may be said not merely to exist for spirit, but to have within 
it already the potency of the higher forms of life ; and just 
as nature is making towards humanity, and in humanity 
at last finds itself; as 

‘Striving to be man, the worm 
Mounts through all the spires of form,’ § 


1 Cf. Ottley, Christian Ideas and Ideals, p. 52. ‘Christianity does justice 
both to man’s inherent instinct that he has been made for God, and to his 
sense of unworthiness and incapacity.’ 

2 Pensées, part ii. art. 1. 3 Emerson. 


60 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH 


so man, even in his most primitive state, has within him 
the promise of higher things. No theory of his origin can 
interfere with the assumption that he belongs to a moral 
sphere, and is capable of a life which is shaping itself to 
spiritual ends. Whatever be man’s past history and evolu- 
tion, he has from the beginning been made in God’s image, 
and bears the divine impress in all the lineaments of body 
and soul. His degradation cannot wholly obliterate his 
inherent nobility, and indeed his actual corruption bears 
witness to his possible holiness. Granting the hypothesis 
of evolution, matter even in its crudest beginnings contains 
potentially all the rich variety of the natural and spiritual 
life. The reality of a growing thing lies in its highest form 
of being. In the light of the last we explain the first. If 
the universe is, as science pronounces, an organic totality 
which is ever converting its promise into actuality, then 
‘the ultimate interpretration even of the lowest existence of 
the world, cannot be given except on principles which are 
adequate to explain the highest.’! Christian morality is 
therefore nothing else than the morality prepared from all 
eternity, and is but the highest realisation of that which 
man even at his lowest has ever been, though unconsciously, 
striving after. All that is best and highest in man, all that 
he is capable of yet becoming, has really existed within him 
from the very first, just as the flower and leaf and fruit are 
contained implicitly in the seedling. This is the Pauline 
view of human nature. Jesus Christ, according to the 
apostle, is the End and Consummation of the whole crea- 
tion. Everywhere in all men there is a capacity for Christ. 
Whatever be his origin, man comes upon the stage of being 
bearing within him a great and far-reaching destiny. There 
is in him, as Browning says, ‘a tendency to God.’ He is 
not simply what he is now, but all that he is yet to be. 

mr. Assuming, then, the inherent spirituality of man, we 
may now proceed to examine his moral consciousness with 
a view to seeing how its various constituents form what 
we have called the substratum of the Christian life. 


1 Kd. Caird, Critical Philosophy of Kant, p. 35. 


Iv.] THE ESTIMATE OF MAN 61 


1, We must guard against seeming to adopt the old and 
discredited psychology which divides man into a number 
of separate and independent faculties. Man is not made 
like a machine, of a number of adjusted parts. He is a 
unity, a living organism, in which every part has something 
of all the others ; and all together, animated by one spirit, 
constitute a living whole which we call personality. While 
the Bible is rich in terms denoting the different constituents 
of man, neither the Old Testament nor the New regards 
human nature as a plurality of powers. A kind of unity or 
hierarchy of the natural faculties is assumed, and amid all 
the difference of function and variety of operation it is 
undeniable that the New Testament writers generally, and 
particularly St. Paul, presuppose a unity of consciousness— 
a single ego, or Soul. It is unnecessary to discuss the 
question, much debated by Biblical psychologists, as to 
whether the apostle recognises a threefold or a twofold 
division of man.! Our view is that he recognised only a 
twofold division, body and soul, which, however, he always 
regarded as constituting a unity, the body itself being 
psychical or interpenetrated with spirit, and the spirit 
always acting upon and working through the physical 
powers. 

Man is a unique phenomenon in the world. Even on his 
physical side he is not a piece of dead matter, but is instinct 
through and through with spirit. And on his psychical 
side he is not an unsubstantial wraith, but a being incon- 
ceivable apart from outward embodiment. Perhaps the 
most general term which we may adopt is ¥vyx7 or Soul— 
the living self or vital and animating principle which is at 
once the seat of all bodily sensation and the source of the 
higher cognitive faculties. 

2. The fact of ethical interest from which we must 
proceed is that man, in virtue of his spiritual nature, is 
akin to God, and participates in the three great elements 
of the divine Personality—thought, love and will.? Per- 
sonality has been called ‘ the culminating fact of the uni- 


1 See Author’s Ethics of St. Paul, 2 Ottley, idem, p. 55. 


62 . CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


verse.’ And it is the task of man to realise his true person- 
ality—to fulfil the law of his highest self. In this work he 
has to harmonise and bring to the unity of his personal life, 
by means of one dominating force, the various elements of 
his nature—his sensuous, emotional, and rational powers. 
By the constitution of his being he belongs to a larger 
world, and when he is true to himself he is ever reaching 
out towards it. From the very beginning of life, and even 
in the lowest phases of his nature he has within him the 
potency of the divine. He carries the infinite in his soul, 
and by reason of his very existence shares the life of God. 
The value of his soul in this sense is repeatedly emphasised 
in scripture. In our Lord’s teaching it is perhaps the most 
distinctive note. The soul, or self-conscious spiritual ego, 
is spoken of as capable of being ‘ acquired’ or ‘lost.’? It 
is acquired or possessed when a man seeks to regain the 
image in which he was created. It is lost when he refuses 
to respond to those spiritual influences by which Christ 
besets him, and by means of which the soul is moulded into 
the likeness of God. 

3. A full presentation of this subject would involve a 
reference even to the physical powers which form an 
integral part of man and witness to his eternal destiny. 

(1) The very body is to be redeemed and sanctified, and 
made an instrument of the new lifein Christ. ‘The extremes 
of asceticism and self-indulgence, both of which found 
advocates in Greek philosophy and even in the early 
Church, have no countenance in scripture. Evil does not 
reside in the flesh, as the Greeks held, but in the will which 
uses the flesh for its base ends. Not mutilation but trans- 
formation, not suppression but consecration is the Christian 
ideal. The natural is the basis of the spiritual. Man is 
the Temple of God, every part of which is sacred. Christ 
claims to be King of the body as of every other domain of 
life. The secret of spiritual progress does not consist in 
the unflinching destruction of the flesh, but in its firm but 
kindly discipline for loyal service. It is not, therefore, by 


1 Luke xxi. 19. 


ry] THE ESTIMATE OF MAN 63 


leaving the body behind but by taking it up into our higher 
self that we become spiritual. As Browning says, 


‘Let us cry all good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more now 
Than flesh helps soul.’ 


Without dwelling further upon the physical elements of 
man, there are three constituents or functions of personality 
prominent in the New Testament which claim our con- 
sideration, reason, conscience and will. It is just because 
man possesses, or ts mind, conscience and will, that he is 
capable of responding to the life which Christ offers, and 
of sharing in the divine character which he reveals. 

(2) The term vovs, or reason, is of frequent occurrence in 
the New Testament. Christianity highly honours the 
intellectual powers of man and accords to the mind an 
important role in apprehending and entering into the 
thoughts and purposes of God. ‘Thou shalt love the Lord 


“thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul and with 


all thy mind,’ says Jesus. Many are disposed to think that 
the exercise of faith, the immediate organ of spiritual 
apprehension, is checked by the interference of reason. But | 
so far from faith and reason being opposed, not only are 
they necessary to each other, but/in all real faith there is an 
element of reason. ? In all religious feeling, as in morality, 
art, and other spheres of human activity, there is the 


| underlying element of reason which is the characteristic of 
all the activities of a self-conscious intelligence. ‘To endeav- 


our to elicit that element, to infuse into the spontaneous 
and unsifted conceptions of religious experience the objec- 
tive clearness, necessity and organic unity of thought—is 
the legitimate aim of science, in religion as in other spheres. 
It would be strange if in the highest of all provinces of 
human experience intelligence must renounce her claim.} 
The Ritschlian value-judgment theory in its disparage- 
ment of philosophy is practically a dethronement of reason. 
And the protest of Pragmatism and the voluntarists gener- 


1 Cf, John Caird, Introd. to the Philosophy of Religion. 


64 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


ally against what they term ‘ Intellectualism ’} and their 
distrust of the logical faculty, are virtually an avowal of 
despair and a resort to agnosticism, if not to scepticism. 
If we are to renounce the quest for objective truth, and 
accept ‘ those ideas only which we can assimilate, validate, 
corroborate,’ ? those ideas in short which are ‘ practically 
useful in guiding us to desirable issues,’ then it would seem 
we are committed to a world of subjective caprice and 
confusion and must give up the belief in a rational view of 
the universe. 

(3) Inspite of the wonderfulsuggestiveness of M. Bergson’s 
philosophy, we are unable to accept the distinction which 
that writer draws between intuition and intelligence, in 
which he seems to imply that intuition is the higher of the 
two activities. Intelligence, according to this writer, is at 
home exclusively in spatial considerations, in solids, in 
geometry, but it is to be repelled as a foreign element when 
it comes to deal with life. Bergson would exclude rational 
thought and intelligence from life, creation, and initiative. 
The clearest evidence of intuition is in the works of great 
artists. ‘What is implied is that in artistic creation, in the 
work of genius and imagination, we have pure novelty 
issuing from no premeditated or rational idea, but simply 
pure irrationality and unaccountableness.’* The work of 
art cannot be predicated; it is beyond reason, as life is 
beyond logic and law. But so far from finding life un- 
intelligible, it would be nearer the truth to say that man’s 
reason can, strictly speaking, understand nothing else.® 
‘Instinct finds,’ says Bergson, ‘but does not search. 
Reason searches but cannot find.’ ® ‘ But,’ adds Professor 
Dewey, ‘ what we find is meaningless save as measured by 
searching, and so instincts and passions must be elevated 
into reason.’? In the lower creatures instinct does the 


1 Cf, Wm. James’s Pragmatism and A Pluralistic World. 

2 Idem, p. 201. 

3 Cf. Bosanquet, The Principles of Individuality and Value. 

4 Bergson, Evol. Creat., p. 174 f. 

5 Of E. Caird, Kant, vol, ii. pp. 530 and 535. 

6 Hvol. Creat., p. 159. 7 Hub. Jour., July 1911. 


Iv. ] THE ESTIMATE OF MAN 65 


work of reason—sufficiently for the simple conditions in 
which the animal lives. And in the earlier stages of human 
life instinct plays an important part. But when man, both 
as an individual and as humanity, advances to a more 
complex life, instinct is unequal to the new task confronting 
him. We cannot be content to be guided by instinct. 
Reason asserts itself and seeks to permeate all our experi- 
ences, and give unity and purpose to all our thoughts and 
acts. 

The recent disparagement of intellectualism is probably 
a reaction against the extreme absolutism of German 
idealism which, beginning with Kant, found fullest expres- 
sion in Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. But the true way to 
meet exclusive rationalism is not to discredit the function 
of mind, but to give to it a larger domain of experience. 
We do not exalt faith by emptying it of all intellectual 
content and reducing it to mere subjective feeling ; nor do 
we explain genius by ascribing its acts to blind, unthinking 
impulse. ‘The real is the rational,’ says Hegel. Truth, 
in other words, presupposes a rational universe which we, 
as rational beings, must assume in all our thought and effort. 
To set up faith against reason, or intuition against intelli- 
gence is to set the mind against itself. We cannot set up 
an order of facts, as Professor James would have us do, 
outside the intellectual realm; for what does not fall 
within our experience can have for us no meaning, and 
what for us has no meaning cannot be an object of faith. 
An ineradicable belief in the rationality of the world is the 
ultimate basis of all art, morality and religion. To rest in 
mere intuition or emotion and not to seek objective truth 
would be for man to renounce his true prerogative and to 
open the door for all kinds of superstition and caprice. 

m1. In the truest sense it may be claimed that this is the 
teaching of Christianity. When Christ says that we are to 
love God with our minds He seems to imply that there is 
such a thing as intelligent affection. The distinctive feat- 
ure of our Lord’s claim is that God is not satisfied when 
His creatures render a merely implicit obedience; He 


66 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


desires also the enthusiastic use of their intellect, intent on 
knowing everything that it is possible for men to know 
about His character and ways. And is there not some- 
thing sublime in this demand of God that the noblest part 
of man should be consecrated to Him? God reveals Him- 
self in Christ to our highest ; and He would have us respond 
to His manifestations with our highest. Nor is this the 
attitude of Christ only. The Apostle Paul also honours 
the mind, and gives to it the supreme place as the organ 
of apprehending and appropriating divine truth. Mr. 
Lecky brings the serious charge against Christianity that it 
habitually disregards the virtues of the intellect. If there 
is any truth in this statement it refers, not to the genius of 
the Gospel itself, nor to the earlier exponents of it, but 
rather to the Church in those centuries which followed 
the conversion of Constantine. No impartial reader of 
St. Paul’s Epistles can aver that the apostle made a virtue 
of ignorance and credulity. These documents, which are 
the earliest exposition of the mind of Christ, impress us 
rather with the intellectual boldness of their attempt to 
grapple with the greatest problems of life. Paul was 
essentially a thinker ; and, as Sabatier says, is to be ranked 
with Plato and Aristotle, Augustine and Kant, as one of 
the mightiest intellectual forces of the world. But not 
content with being a thinker himself, he sought to make 
his converts thinkers too, and he does not hesitate to make 
the utmost demand upon their reasoning faculties. ‘ He 
assumes a natural capacity in man for apprehending the — 
truth, and appeals to the mind rather than to the emotions/ 
The Gospel is styled by him ‘the word of truth,’ and he 
bids men ‘ prove all things.’ Worship is not a meaningless 
ebullition of feeling or a superstitious ritual, but a form of 
self-expression which is to be enlightened and guided by 
thought. ‘I will pray with the understanding and sing 
with the understanding.’ 

It is indeed a strong and virile Christianity which Paul 
and the other apostles proclaim. It is no magic spell they 
seek to exert. They are convinced that there is that in 


IV. ] THE ESTIMATE OF MAN 67 


the mind of man which is ready to respond to a thoughtful 
Gospel. If men will only give their unprejudiced minds to 
God’s Word, it is able to make them ‘ wise unto salvation.’ 
It would lead us beyond the scope of this chapter to con- 
sider the peculiar Pauline significance of faith. It is 
enough to say that while he does not identify it with intel- 
lectual assent, as little does he confine it to mere subjective 
assurance. Itis the primary act of the human spirit when 
brought into contact with divine truth, and it lies at the 
root of a new ethical power, and of a deeper knowledge of 
God. If the apostle appears to speak disparagingly of 
wisdom it is the wisdom of pride, of ‘knowledge that 
puffeth up.’ He warns Timothy against ‘science falsely 
so called.’ On the whole St. Paul exalts the intellect and 
bids men attain to the full exercise of their mental powers. 
‘Be not children in understanding: but in understanding 
be men.’ 

If, as we have seen, the body be an integral part of man, 
and has its place and function in the Christian life, not less, 
but even more, has the mind a special ethical importance. 
It is to the intelligence that Christianity appeals, and it is 
with the rational faculties that moral truth is apprehended 
and applied to life. Reason in its broadest sense is the 
most distinctive feature of man, and by means of it he exerts 
his mightiest influence upon the world. Mental and moral 
growth are closely connected, and personal character is 
largely moulded by thought. ‘As a man thinketh in his 
heart so is he.’ Not only at the beginning of the new life, 
but in all its after stages the mind is an important factor, 
and its consecration and cultivation are laid upon us as an 
obligation by Him in whose image we have been made, and 
whom to know and serve is our highest end. 


1 Some sentences in the above are borrowed from the writer’s Ethics of 
St. Paul. 


68 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


CHAPTER V 
THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 


PassInG from the physical and mental constituents of man, 
we turn to the more distinctly moral elements ; and in this 
chapter we shall consider that aspect of the human con- 
sciousness to which mankind has given the name of 
‘ conscience.” 

No subject has presented greater difficulties to the 
moralist, and there are few which require more careful 
elucidation. From the earliest period of reflection the 
question how we came to have moral ideas has been a dis- 
puted one. At first it was thought that there existed in 
man a distinct innate faculty or moral sense which was 
capable of deciding categorically man’s duty without 
reference to history or condition. But in modern times 
the theory of evolution has discredited the inviolable 
character of conscience, and sought rather to determine its 
nature and significance in the light of its origin and develop- 
ment. Only the barest outline of the subject can be 
attempted here, since our object is simply to show that 
however we may account for its presence, there is in man, 
as we know him, some power or function which bears witness 
to divine truth and fits him to respond to the revelation of 
Christ. It will be most convenient to consider the subject 
under three heads: 1. the history of the Conception ; 
mm. the nature and origin of Conscience ; and I. its present 
validity. 

1. History of the Conception.—‘ The name conscience,’ 
says a writer on the subject, ‘appears somewhat late in 


v.] THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 69 


the history of the world: that for which it stands is as old 
as mankind.’ 4 

1. Without pushing our inquiries back into the 
legendary lore of savage life, in which we find evidence 
of the idea in the social institutions and religious enact- 
ments of primitive races, it is among the Greeks that 
the word, if not the idea of conscience, first meets us. 
Perhaps the earliest trace of the notion is to be found in 
the mythological conception of the Furies, whose business 
it was to avenge crime—a conception which might be 
regarded as the reaction of man’s own nature against the 
violation of better instincts, if not as the reflection or 
embodiment of what is popularly called conscience. It 
can scarcely be doubted that the Erinnyes of Auschylus 
were deities of remorse, and possess psychological signi- 
ficance as symbols of the primitive action of conscience.? 
Though Sophocles is less of a theologian than Atschylus, 
and problems of Ethics count less than the human 
interest of his story, the law of Nemesis does find in him 
dramatic expression, and the noble declaration put into 
the mouth of Antigone concerning the unwritten laws of 
God that ‘know no change and are not of to-day nor 
yesterday, but must be obeyed in preference to the tempo- 
rary commandments of men,’ ? is a protest on behalf of 
conscience against human oppression. And even in 
Euripides, regarded as an impious scoffer by some scholars,4 
there are not wanting, especially in the example of Alcestis, 
evidence of belief in that divine justice and moral order of 
which the virtues of self-devotion and sacrifice in the soul 
of man are the witness. 

Socrates was among the first teachers of antiquity who 
led the way to that self-knowledge which is of the essence 
of conscience, and in the ‘ Demon,’ or inner voice, which 
he claimed to possess, some writers have detected the trace 

1 Davidson, The Christian Conscience. 

2 Cf. Symonds, Studies of Greek Poets, first series, p. 191. 

3 Antigone, Plumptre’s 'l'rans., 455-9. 


4 Cf. Bunsen, God in History, vol. ii. p. 224 ; also Campbell, Religion in 
Greek Literature, 


70 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


of the intuitive monitor of man. Plato’s discussion of the 
question, ‘ What is the highest good ? ’ involves the capacity 
of moral judgment, and his conception of reason regulating 
desire suggests a power in the mind whose function it is 
to point to the highest good and to subordinate to it all 
the other impulses of man. In the ethics of Aristotle 
there is a reference to a faculty in man or ‘rule within,’ 
which, he says, the beasts lack. 

But it is among the Stoics that the word first appears ; 
and it is to the Roman moralist, Seneca, that we are in- 
debted for the earlier definite perception of an abiding 
consciousness bearing witness concerning a man’s own 
conduct. The writings of Epictetus, Aurelius, and Seneca 
approach in moral sublimity and searching self-analysis 
the New Testament Scriptures. It was probably to the 
Stoics that St. Paul was indebted for the word cvveidyots 
to which he has given so distinctive a meaning that it has 
coloured and determined the whole later history of the 
moral consciousness. 

2. But if the word as used in the New Testament comes 
from Greek sources the idea itself was long prevalent in 
the Jewish conception of life, which, even more than the 
Greek, was constitutive of, and preparatory to, the Chris- 
tian view. The word does not, indeed, occur in the Old 
Testament, but the question of God to Adam, ‘ Where 
art thou ?’ the story of Cain and the curse he was to suffer 
for the murder of his brother; the history of Joseph’s 
dealing with his brethren; the account of David’s sin 
and conviction, are by implication appeals to conscience. 
Indeed, the whole history of Israel, from the time when 
the promise was given to Abraham and the law through 
Moses until the denunciations of wrong-doing and the 
predictions of doom of the later prophets, is one long 
education of the moral sense. It is the problem of con- 
science that imparts its chief interest to the book of Job; 
and onereason why the Psalms in all ages have been so highly 
prized is because they are the cries of a wounded conscience, 
and the confessions of a convicted and contrite heart. 


v.] THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 71 


3. If we turn to the New Testament we find, as we 
might expect, a much clearer testimony to the reality of 
the conscience. The word came into the hands of the New 
Testament writers ready-made, but they gave to it a richer 
meaning, so that it is to them we must go if we would under- . 
stand the nature and the supremacy of the conscience. 
The term occurs thirty-one times in the New Testament, 
but it does not appear once in the Gospels. It is, indeed, 
principally a Pauline expression, and to the apostle of the 
Gentiles more than to any other writer is due the clear 
conception and elucidation of the term. It would be a 
mistake, however, to assume that the doctrine itself depends 
entirely upon the use of the word. Our Lord never, indeed, 
employs the term, but surely no teacher ever sounded the 
depths of the human heart as Hedid. It was His mission 
to reveal men to themselves, to convict them of sin, and 
show the need of that life of righteousness and purity which 
He came to give. ‘Why even of yourselves,’ He said, 
‘judge ye not what is right?’ Christ, indeed, might be 
called the conscience of man. To awaken, renew and 
enlighten the moral sense of individuals, to make them 
know what they were and what they were capable of 
becoming was the work of the Son of Man, and in contact 
with Him every one was morally unveiled. 

The word occurs twice in Acts, five times in Hebrews, 
three times in the Epistles of Peter, and more than twenty 
times in the Pauline Epistles. St. Paul’s doctrine of the 
conscience is contained in Romans ii. 14, 15, where he speaks 
of the Gentiles being ‘ a law unto themselves,’ inasmuch as 
they possess a ‘ law written in their hearts,’ ‘ their conscience 
bearing witness, therewith accusing or excusing them.’ 
The idea underlying the passage is the responsibility of all 
men for their actions, their condemnation in sin, and their 
acceptance in righteousness. This applies to Gentiles as 
well as Jews, and it applies to them because, though they 
have not the explicit revelation of the law, they have a 
revelation of the good in their hearts. The passage there- 
fore teachestwo things: (1) That man has received a revela- 


72 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


tion of good sufficient at all stages of his history to make 
him morally responsible; and (2) That man possesses a 
moral faculty which indeed is not a separate power, but 
the whole moral consciousness or personality in virtue of 
which he recognises and approves of the good which, either 
as the law written in his heart or as the law communicated 
in the Decalogue, has been revealed to him, and by whose 
authority he judges himself. 

m. Nature and Origin of Conscience.—While experience 
seems to point to the existence of something in man witness- 
ing to the right, there is great diversity of view as to the 
nature of this moral element. The word ‘Conscience’ 
stands for a concept whose meaning is far from well defined, 
and the lack of definiteness has left its trace upon ethical 
theories. While some moralists assign conscience to the 
rational or intellectual side of man, and make it wholly 
a faculty of judgment; others attribute it to feeling 
or impulse, and make it a sense of pleasure or pain; 
others again associate it more closely with the will, and 
regard its function to be legislative or imperative. These 
differences of opinion reveal the complexity of the nature 
of conscience. The fact is, that it belongs to all these 
departments—the intellectual, emotional, and volitional— 
and ought to be regarded not as a single faculty distinct 
from the particular decisions, motives, and acts of man, 
not as an activity foreign to the ego, but as the expression 
of the whole personality. The question of the origin of 
conscience, though closely connected with its nature, is 
for ethics only of secondary importance. It is desirable, 
however, to indicate the two main theories which have 
been held regarding its genesis. While there are several 
varieties, they may be divided broadly into two—Intui- 
tionalism and Evolutionalism. , 

1. Nativism, of which Intuitionalism is the most common 
form, regards the conscience as a separate natural endow- 
ment, coeval with the creation of man. Every individual, 
it is maintained, has been endowed by nature with a distinct 
faculty or organ by which he can immediately and clearly 


v.] THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 73 


pronounce upon the rightness or wrongness of his own 
actions. In its most pronounced form this theory main- 
tains that man has not merely a general consciousness of 
moral distinctions, but possesses from the very first, apart 
from all experience and education, a definite and clear 
knowledge of the particular vices which ought to be 
avoided and the particular virtues which ought to be 
practised. ‘This theory is usually connected with a form 
of theism which maintains that the conscience is particu- 
larly a divine gift, and is, indeed, God’s special witness or 
oracle in the heart of man. 

Though there would seem to be an element of truth in 
intuitionalism, since man, to be man at all, must be con- 
ceived as made for God and having that in him which points 
to the end or ideal of his being, still in its most extreme 
form it would not be difficult to show that this theory is 
untenable. It is objectionable, because it involves two 
assumptions, of which the one conflicts with experience, 
and the other with the psychological nature of man. 

(1) Experience gives usno warrant forsupposing that duty 
is always the same, and that conscience is therefore exempt 
from change. History shows rather that moral convictions 
only gradually emerge, and that the laws and customs of 
one age are often repudiated by the next. What may 
seem right to one man is no longer so to his descendant. 
History records deeds committed in one generation in the 
name of conscience which in the same name a later genera- 
tion has condemned with horror. Moreover, the possi- 
bility of a conflict between duties proves that unconditional 
truth exists at no stage of moral development. There is no 
law so sacred that it may not in special cases have to yield 
to the sacredness of a higher law. When duties conflict, 
our choice cannot be determined by any a priori principle 
residing in ourselves. It must be governed by that wider 
conception of the moral life which is to be gained through 
one’s previous development, and on the basis of a ripe 
moral experience.! (2) Nor is this theory consistent with 


1 Cf, Wundt, Hthik, vol. ii. p. 66. 


74 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


the known nature of man. We know of no separate and 
independent organ called conscience. Man must not be 
divided against himself. Reason and feeling enter into all 
acts of will, since these are not processes different in kind, 
but elements of voluntary activity itself and inseparable 
from it. It is impossible for a man to be determined in 
his actions or judgments by a mere external formula of 
duty, a ‘categorical imperative,’ as Kant calls it, apart 
from motives. Moreover, all endowments may be regarded 
as divine gifts, and it is a precarious position to claim for 
one faculty a spiritually divine or supernatural origin 
which is denied to others. Man is related to God in his 
whole nature. The view which regards the law of duty 
as something foreign to man, stern and unchangeable in 
its decrees, and in nowise dependent upon the gradual 
development and growing content of the moral life is not 
consistent either with history or psychology. 

2. Hvolutionalism, which since the time of Darwin has 
been applied by Spencer and others to account for the 
growth of our moral ideas, holds that conscience is the 
result of a process of development, but does not limit the 
process to the life of the individual. It extends to the 
experience of the race. While admitting the existence of 
conscience as a moral faculty in the rational man of to-day, 
it holds that it did not exist in his primitive ancestors. 
Earlier individuals accumulated a certain amount of © 
experience and moral knowledge, the result of which, as a 
habit or acquired capacity, was handed down to their 
successors. From the first man has been a member of 
society, and is what he is in virtue of his relation to it. 
All that makes him man, all his powers of body and mind, 
are inherited. His instincts and desires, which are the 
springs of action, are themselves the creation of heredity, 
association and environment. ‘The individual takes its 
shape at every point from its relation to the social organism 
of which it is a part. What man really seeks from the 
earliest is satisfaction. ‘No school,’ says Mr. Spencer, 
‘can avoid taking for the ultimate moral aim a desirable 


v.] THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 75 


state of feeling.’! Prolonged experience of pleasure in 
connection with actions which serve social ends has re- 
sulted in certain physiological changes in the brain and 
nervous system rendering these actions constant. Thus, 
according to Spencer, is begotten conscience. 

While acknowledging the service which the evolutionary 
theory has done in calling attention to the place and function 
of experience and social environment in the development 
of the moral life, and in showing that moral judgment, like 
every other capacity, must participate in the gradual un- 
folding of personality, as a conclusive explanation of con- 
science it must be pronounced insufficient. Press the 
analysis of sensation as far back as we please, and make an 
analysis of instincts and feelings as detailed as possible, we 
never get in man a mere sensation, as we find it in the 
lower animal ; it is always sensation related to, and modified 
by, a self. In the simplest human instincts there is always 
a spiritual element which is the basis of the possibility at 
once of knowledge and morality. ‘That countless genera- 
tions,’ says Green, ‘should have passed during which a trans- 
mitted organism was progressively modified by reaction 
on its surroundings, by struggle for existence or otherwise, 
till its functions became such that an eternal consciousness 
could realise or produce itself through them—might add 
_to the wonder with which the consideration of what we 


» do and are must always fill us, but it could not alter the 


results of that consideration.’ ? 

No process of evolution, even though it draws upon illimi- 
table ages, can evolve what was not already present in the 
form of a spiritual potency. The empiric treatment of 
conscience as the result of social environment and culture 
leads inevitably back to the assumption of some rudi- 
mentary moral consciousness without which the develop- 
ment of a moral sense would be an impossibility. The 
history of mankind, moreover, shows that conscience, so 
far from being merely the reflex of the prevailing customs 
and institutions of a particular age, has frequently dis- 


1 Data of Ethics, p. 18. 2 Proleg., § 83. 


76 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


closed its special character by reacting upon and pro- 
testing against the recognised traditions of society. The 
individual conscience has often been in advance of its 
times ; and the progress of man has been secured as much 
by the champions of liberty as by those who conform to 
accepted customs. In all moral advance there comes a 
stage when, in the conflict of habit and principle, conscience 
asserts itself, not only in revealing a higher ideal, but in 
urging men to seek it. 

ut. The Validity and Witness of Conscience.—It is not, 
however, with the origin of conscience, but with its capaci- 
ties and functions in its developed state that Ethics is 
primarily concerned. The beginning must be interpreted 
by the end, and the process by the result to which it tends. 

1. The Christian doctrine is committed neither to the 
intuitional nor the evolutionist theory, but rather may be 
said to reconcile both by retaining that which is true in each. 
While it holds to the inherent ability on the part of a being 
made in God’s image to recognise at the different stages of 
his growth and development God’s will as it has been 
progressively revealed, it avoids the necessity of conceiving 
man as possessing from the very beginning a full-fledged 
organ of infallible authority. The conscience participates 
in man’s general progress and enlightenment. Nor can 
the moral development of the individual be held separate 
from the moral development of the race. As there is a 
moral solidarity of mankind, so the individual conscience 
is conditional by the social conscience. The individual 
does not start in life with a full-grown moral apparatus 
any more than he starts with a matured physical frame. 
The most distinctively spiritual attainments of man have 
their antecedents in less human and more animal capacities. 
As there is a continuity of human life, so individuals and 
peoples inherit the moral assets of previous generations, and 
incorporate in their experience all past attainments. Con- 
science is involved in man’s moral history. It suffers in 
his sin and alienation from God, becoming clouded in its 
insight and feeble in its testimony, but it shares also in his 


v.] THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 77 


spiritual advancement, growing more sensitive and decisive 
in its judgments. 

(1) Conscience, as the New Testament teaches, can be 
perverted and debased. It is always open to a free agent 
to disobey his conscience and reject its authority. On the 
intuitional theory, which regards the conscience as a separ- 
able and independent faculty, it would be difficult to 
vindicate the terrible consequences of such conduct. It is 
because the conscience is the man himself as related to the 
consciousness of the divine will that the effects are so 
injurious. Conscience may be (a) Stained, defiled, and 
polluted in its very texture (1 Cor. viii. 7); (6) Branded or 
seared (1 Tim. iv. 2), rendered insensible to all feeling for 
good ; (c) Perverted, in which the very light within becomes 
darkness. In this last stage the man calls evil good and 
good evil—the very springs of his nature are poisoned and 
the avenues of his soul are closed. 


‘This is death, and the sole death, 
When man’s loss comes to him from his gain.’} 


(2) But if conscience can be perverted it may also be 
improved. ‘The education is twofold, social and individual. 
Through society, says Green, personality is actualised. ‘No 
individual can make a conscience for himself. He always 
needs a society to make it for him.’ There is no such thing 
as a purely individual conscience. Man can only realise 
himself, come to his best, in relation to others. The con- 
ditions amid which a man is born and reared—the home, 
the school, the church, the state—are the means by which 
the conscience is exercised and educated. But the indi- 
vidual is not passive. He has also a part to play ; and the 
whole task of man may be regarded as an endeavour to 
make his conscience effective in life. The New Testament 
writers refrain from speaking of the conscience as an un- 
erring and perfect organ. Their language implies rather 
the possibility of its gradual enlightenment; and St. Paul 
specially dwells upon the necessity of ‘ growing in spiritual 

1 Browning, 2 Proleg., § 321. 


78 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


knowledge and perception.’ As life advances moral judg- 
ment may be modified and corrected by fuller knowledge, 
and the perception of a particular form of conduct as good 
may yield to the experience of something better. 

2. ‘It is one of the most wonderful things,’ says Pro- 
fessor Wundt, ‘ about moral development, that it unites so 
many conditions of subordinate value in the accomplish- 
ment of higher results,’ 1 and the worth of morality is not 
endangered because the grounds of its realisation in special 
cases do not always correspond in elevation to the moral 
ideas. The conscience is not an independent faculty which 
issues its mandates irrespective of experience. Its judg- 
ments are always conditioned by motives. The moral 
imperatives of conscience may be grouped under four 
heads:2 (1) Haternal constraints, including all forms of 
punishment for immoral actions and the social disadvan- 
tages which such actions involve. These can only produce 
the lowest grade of morality, outward propriety, the mere 
appearance of virtue which has only a negative value in so 
far as it avoids what is morally offensive. (2) Internal 
constraints, consisting of influences excited by the example 
of others, by public opinion and habits formed through 
education and training. (3) Self-satisfaction, originating 
in the agent’s own consciousness. It may be a sense of 
pleasure or feeling of self-approbation : or higher still, the 
idea of duty for its own sake, commonly called ‘con- 
scientiousness.’ (4) 7'he ideal of life, the highest imperative 
of conscience. Here the nobility of life, as a whole, the 
supreme life-purpose, gives meaning and incentive to each 
and every action. The ideal of life is not, however, some- 
thing static and completed, given once and for all. It 
grows with the enlightenment of the individual and the 
development of humanity. The consciousness of every age 
comprehends it in certain laws and ends of life. The high- 
est form of the ideal finds its embodiment in what are called 
noble characters. These ethical heroes rise, in rare and 
exceptional circumstances, above the ordinary level of 


1 Hthtk, vol. ii. p. 66. 2 Idem. 


vi) THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 79 


common morality, gathering up into themselves the entire 
moral development of the past, and radiating their influence 
into the remotest distances of the future. They are the 
embodiments of the conscience of the race, at once the 
standard and challenge of the moral life of mankind, whose 
influence awakens the slumbering aspirations of men, and 
whose creative genius affects the whole history of the world, 
lifting it to higher levels of thought and endeavour. 

The supreme example—unique, however, both in kind 
and degree, and differing by its uniqueness from every other 
life which has in some measure approximated to the ideal 
—is disclosed in Jesus Christ. Thus it is that the moral 
consciousness of the world generally and of the individual 
in particular, of which the conscience is the organ and 
expression, develops from less to more, under the influence 
of the successive imperatives of conduct, till finally it 
attains to the vision of the greatness of life as it is revealed 
in its supreme and all-commanding ideal.} 

3. Finally, in this connection the question of the per- 
manence of conscience may be referred to. Is the ultimate 
of life a state in which conscience will pervade every depart- 
ment of a man’s being, dominating all his thoughts and 
activities ? or is the ideal condition one in which conscience 
shall be outgrown and its operation rendered superfluous ? 
A recent writer on Christian ethics? makes the remarkable 
statement that where there is no sense of sin conscience 
has no function, and he draws the inference that where 
there is complete normality and perfect moral health con- 
science will be in abeyance. Satan, inasmuch as he lacks 
all moral instinct, can know nothing of conscience; and, 
because of His sinlessness, Jesus must also be pronounced 
conscienceless. Hence the paradox attributed to Machia- 
velli: ‘ He who is without conscience is either a Christ or a 
devil.’ But though it is true that the Son of Man had no 
actual experience of sin, and could not, indeed, feel remorse 
or contrition, yet in so far as He was man there was in Him 


1 Cf. Wundt, thik, vol. ii. pp. 67-74. 
2 Lemme, Christliche Hthik, vol. i. 


80 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


the possibility of sin, and in the intimate relation which He 
bore to the human race He had a most accurate and clear 
knowledge both of the meaning and consequences of evil. 
So far from saying that Christ had no conscience, it would 
be nearer the truth to say that He had a perfect conscience, 
a personality and fullness of consciousness which was a 
complete reflection of, and harmony with, the highest 
conceivable good. The confusion of thought into which 
Professor Lemme seems to fall is due, we cannot help 
thinking, to the too restricted and negative signification 
he gives to conscience. Conscience is not merely the 
faculty of reproving and approving one’s own conduct 
when brought into relation with actual sin. It is involved 
in every moral judgment. A good conscience is not only 
the absence of an evil one. It has also a positive sanction- 
ing value. The ‘ought’ of life is constantly present. It 
is the whole man ever conscious of, and confronted by, his 
ideal self. The conscience participates in man’s gradual 
progress and enlightenment; so far from the individual 
growing towards a condition in which self-judgment ceases, 
he is progressing rather in moral discernment, and becoming 
more and more responsive to the will of Him whose impress 
and image he bears upon his soul. 

The tendency of modern physiological accounts of con- 
science has been to undermine its authority and empty life 
of its responsibility, but no theory of the origin of con- 
science must be permitted to invalidate its judgments. 
If conscience has any moral worth it is that it contains the 
promise and witness of God. The prime question is, What 
is the nature of its testimony ? According to the teaching 
of Scripture it bears witness to the existence of a higher 
than man—to a divine Person with whom he is spiritually 
akin and to whom he is accountable. 

‘God’s most intimate presence in the soul.’ As the 
revelation of God’s will grows clearer man’s ideal becomes 
loftier. Hence a man’s conscience is the measure of his 
moral life. It reveals God, and in the light of God reveals 
man to himself. We carry a ‘forever’ within our bosom, 


v.] THE WITNESS OF CONSCIENCE 81 


‘ein Gott in unserer Brust,’ ! as Goethe says, which reminds 
us that even while denizens of this earth we are citizens of 
heaven and the sharers of an eternal life. Like another 
John the Baptist, conscience points to one greater than 
itself. It emphasises the discord that exists between the 
various parts of man’s nature, a discord which it condemns 
but cannot remove. It can judge, but it cannot compel. 
Hence it places man before Christ, and bids him yield to 
the sway of a new transforming power. As one has finely 
said, “He who has implanted in every breast such irre- 
fragible testimony to the right, and such unappeasable 
yearnings for its complete triumph, now comes in His own 
perfect way to reveal Himself as the Lord of conscience, 
the Guide of its perplexities, the Strength of its weakness 
and the Perfecter of its highest hopes.’ ? 


1 Tasso, act iii. scene 2, 2 Davidson, The Christian Conscience, p. 118. 


82 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


CHAPTER VI 
‘THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 


CLOSELY connected with the conscience as a moral capacity 
is the power of self-determination, or as it is popularly 
called—free-will. If conscience is the manifestation of 
man as knowing, will is more especially his manifestation 
as a being who acts. The subject which we now approach 
presents at once a problem and a task. The nature of free- 
dom has been keenly debated from the earliest times, and 
the history of the problem of the will is almost the history 
of philosophy. The practical question which arises is 
whether the individual has any power by which the gulf 
between the natural and the spiritual can be transcended. 
Can man choose and decide for a spiritual world above that 
in which he is by nature involved ? The revelation of the 
good must, indeed, precede the activity of man. But at 
the same time the change cannot merely happen to him. 
He cannot simply be a passive recipient. The new life 
must be taken up by his own activity, and be made his by 
his own decision and acceptance. This responsive activity 
on the part of man is the task which life presents to the 
will. 

Much obviously depends upon the answer we are able 
to give to this question. If man has no power of choice, 
no capacity of self-determination, and is nothing more than 
a part of the natural world, then the ethical life is at once 
ruled out of court. 

The difficulties connected with the problem of moral 
freedom resolve themselves mainly into three: a scientific, 
a psychological, and a theological. 


vi. ‘THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 83 


1. On the part of natural science it is claimed that man 
is subject, like everything else, to physical necessity. 

m. From the psychological standpoint it is urged that 
man’s actions are always determined by the strongest 
motive. 

mi. On the theological side it is alleged that human 
freedom is incompatible with divine Sovereignty. A com- 
plete doctrine of freedom would require to be examined in 
the light of these three objections. For our purpose it will 
be sufficient to indicate briefly the value of these difficulties, 
and the manner in which they may be met. 


I 


The wonderful progress of the natural sciences in the 
second half of the nineteenth century has tended to banish 
the old idea of freedom from the realm of experience. 
Science, it is maintained, clearly shows that man belongs 
to a great world-movement, in relation to which his whole 
life and work are completely determined. Though even in 
earlier ages, and especially in Stoic philosophy, this con- 
ception of life was not ignored, it is more particularly in 
recent times, under the influence of the evolutionary theory, 
that the idea of determination has been applied with 
relentless insistence to the structure of the soul. There is, 
it is alleged, no room for change or spontaneity. Every- 
thing, down to the minutest impulse, depends upon some- 
thing else, and proceeds from a definite cause. The idea of 
choice is simply the remnant of an unscientific mode of 
thinking. It might be sufficient to reply that in thus 
reducing life and experience to a necessary part of a world- 
whole, more is surrendered than even science is willing to 
yield. The freedom which some writers reject in the 
interests of science they attempt to introduce in an altered 
form. Why are these philosophers so anxious to conserve 
the ethical consequences of life? Is it not because they 
feel that there is something in man which will not fit into 
a rigid world-mechanism, and that conduct would cease 


84 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


to have moral worth if life were reduced to a causal series 
of happenings? But it may be further argued that, if the 
mechanical conception of life, which reduces the spiritual 
to the natural, were consistently carried out it would lead 
not merely to the destruction of the moral life, but to the 
destruction of science itself. If man is merely a part of 
nature, subject entirely to nature’s law, then the realities 
of the higher life—love, self-sacrifice, devotion to ends 
beyond ourselves—must be radically re-interpreted or re- 
garded simply as illusions. But it is also true that from 
this standpoint science itself is an illusion. For if reality 
lies only in the passing impressions of our sensible nature, 
the claim of science to find valid truth must end in the 
denial of the very possibility of knowledge. Does not the 
very existence of physical science imply the priority of 
thought ? While in one sense it may be conceded that man 
is a part of nature, does not the truth, which cannot be 
gainsaid, that he is aware of the fact, prove a certain priority 
and power which differentiates him from al] other phe- 
nomena of the universe? If he is a link in the chain of 
being, he is at least a link which is conscious of what he is. 
He is a being who knows himself, indeed, through the 
objective world, but also realises himself only as he makes 
himself its master and the agent of a divine purpose to 
which all things are contributing, and for which all things 
exist. In all our reasoning and endeavour we must start 
from the unity of the self-conscious soul. Whatever we 
can either know or achieve, is our truth, our act presented 
in and through our self-consciousness. It is impossible 
for us to conceive any standard of truth or object of desire 
outside of our experience. As a thinking and acting being 
man pursues ends, and has the consciousness that they are 
his own ends, subject to his own choice and control. It is 
always the self that the soul seeks ; and the will is nothing 
else than the man making and finding for himself another 
world. 

The attempt has recently been made to measure mental 
states by their physical stimuli and explain mental pro- 


v1. ] *THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 85 


cesses by cerebral reaction. It is true that certain physical 
phenomena seem to be invariably antecedent to thought, 
but so far science has been unable to exhibit the form of 
nexus between these physical antecedents and ideas. Even 
if the knowledge of the topography of the brain were im- 
measurably more advanced than it now is, even though we 
could observe the vast network of nerve-fibres and filaments 
of which the brain is composed, and could discern the actual 
changes in brain-cells under nerve stimulations, we should 
still be a long way off from understanding the nature and 
genesis of ideas which can only be known to us as immediate 
in their own quality. All that we can ever affirm is that a 
certain physical excitation is the antecedent of thought. 
It is illegitimate to say that it is the ‘cause’ of thought ; 
unless, indeed, the word ‘ cause’ be invested with no other 
meaning than that which is involved in such a conception. 
It is, however, in a very general way only, and within an 
exceedingly narrow range, that such measurement is pos- 
sible. We do not even know at present what nerves 
correspond to the sensations of heat and cold, pain and joy ; 
and all attempts to localise will-centres have proved un- 
availing. 

The finer and more delicate feelings cannot be gauged. 
But even though the alleged parallelism were entirely 
demonstrated, the immediate and pertinent question would 
still remain, Who or what is the investigator? Is it an 
ego, a thinking self? or is it only a complex of vibra- 
tions or mechanical impressions bound together in a par- 
ticular body which, for convenience, is called an ego? 
Are the so-called entities—personality, consciousness, self— 
but symbols, as Professor Mach says, useful in so far as they 
help us to express our physical sensations, but which with 
further research must be pronounced illusions ?1 Monistic 
naturalism, which would explain all psychical experiences 
in terms of cerebral action, must not be allowed to arrogate 
to itself powers which it does not possess, and quietly brush 


1 Mach, Erkenntniss und Irrtum, Vorwort. See also Die Analyse der Hmp- 
findungen, p.20. ‘Das Sich rst unretibar,’ he says. 


86 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


aside facts which do not fit into its system. The moral 
sanctions so universally and deeply rooted in the conscious- 
ness of mankind, the feelings of responsibility, of guilt and 
regret ; the soul’s fidelities and heroisms, its hopes and 
fears, its aims and ideals—the poetry, art, and religion 
that have made man what he is, all that has contributed to 
the uplifting of the world—are, to say the least, unaccounted 
for, if it must be held that ‘man is born in chains.’ 
Primary facts must not be surrendered nor ultimate ex- 
periences sacrificed in the interests of theoretic simplicity. 
In the recent anti-metaphysical movement of Germany, of 
which Haeckel, Avenarius, Oswald and Mach are repre- 
sentatives, there is presented the final conflict. It is not 
freedom of will only that is at stake, it is the very existence 
of a spiritual world. ‘ Es ist der Kampf um die Seele.’ ! 

If the world forms a closed and ‘ given’ system in which 
every particular is determined completely by its position 
in the whole, then there can be no place for spontaneity, 
initiative, creation, which all investigation shows to be the 
distinctive feature in human progress and upward move- 
ment. So far from its being true that the world makes 
man, it would be nearer the truth to say that man makes 
the world. A ‘given’ world can never be primary.” 
There must be a mind behind it. We fall back, therefore, 
upon the principle which must be postulated in the whole 
discussion—the unity and self-determining activity of the 
self-conscious mind. 


II 


We may now proceed to the second problem of the 
will, the objection that human action is determined by 
motives, and that what we call freedom is nothing else than 
the necessary result of the pressure of motives upon the 
will. In other words, the conduct of the individual is 
always determined by the strongest motive. It will be 
seen on examination that this objection is just another form 
of that which we have already considered. Indeed, the 


1 Cf. W. Schmidt, Der Kampf um die Seele, p. 18. 2 Cf. Eucken. 


VI.] “THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 87 


analogy of mechanical power is frequently applied to the 
motives of the will. Diverse motives have been compared 
to different forces which meet in one centre, and it is sup- 
posed that the result in action is determined by the united 
pressure of these various motives. Now it may be freely 
admitted at the outset that the individual never acts 
except under certain influences. An uninfluenced man, an 
unbiassed character cannot exist. Not for one moment do 
we escape the environment, material and moral, which 
stimulates our inner life to reaction and response. It is 
not contended that a man is independent of all motives. 
What we do affirm is that the self-realising potentiality of 
personality is present throughout. Much of the confusion 
of thought in connection with this subject arises from a 
false and inadequate notion of personality. Personality is 
the whole man, all that his past history, present circum- 
stances and future aims have made him, the result of all 
that the world of which he is a part has contributed to 
his experience. His bodily sensations, his mental acts, 
his desires and motives are not detached and extraneous 
forces acting on him from without, but elements which 
constitute his whole being. The person, in other words, 
is the visible or tangible phenomenon of something inward— 
the phase or function by which an individual agent takes 
his place in the common world of human intercourse and 
interaction, and plays his peculiar and definite part in life.! 
But this totality of consciousness, so far from reducing man 
to a ‘mere manufactured article,’ gives to personality its 
unique distinction. By personality all things are domin- 
ated. ‘Other things exist, so to speak, for the sake of 
their kind and for the sake of other things: a person is 
never a mere means to something beyond, but always at the 
same time an end in himself. He has the royal and divine 
right of creating law, of starting by his exception a new law 
which shall henceforth be a canon and a standard.’ 2 


1 Cf. Wallace, Logic of Hegel, Proleg., p. 233. 
2 Wallace, Jdem, p. 235. Cf. Aristotle’s wise man whose conduct is not 
Kata Adyor but wera Adbyov. 


=: een 
—< nase ea 


88 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


The objection to the freedom of the will which we are 
now considering may be best appreciated if we examine 
briefly the two extreme theories which have been main- 
tained on the subject. On the one hand, determinism or, as 
it is sometimes called, necessitarianism, holds that all our 
actions are conditioned by law—the so-called motive that 
influences a man’s conduct is simply a link in a chain of 
occurrences of which his act is the last. The future has no 
possibilities hidden in its womb. I am simply what the 
past has made me. My circumstances are given, and my 
character is simply the necessary resultant of the natural 
forces that actuponme. On the other hand, indeterminism, 
or libertarianism, insists upon absolute liberty of choice of 
the individual, and denies that necessity or continuity 
determines conduct. Of two alternatives both may now 
be really possible. You can never predict what will be, 
nor lay down absolutely what a man will do. The world 
is not a finished and fixed whole. It admits of infinite 
possibilities, and instead of the volition I have actually 
made, I could just as easily have made a different one. 

Without entering upon a detailed criticism of these two 
positions, it may be said that both contain an element of 
truth and are not so contradictory as they seem. On the 
one hand, all the various factors of the complex will may 
seem to be determined by something that lies beyond our 
control, and thus our will itself be really determined. But, 
on the other hand, moral continuity in its last analysis is 
only a half truth, and must find its complement in the 
recognition of the possibilities of new beginnings. The 
very nature of moral action implies, as Lotze has said, that 
new factors may enter into the stream of causal sequence, 
and that even though a man’s life may be, and must be, 
largely conditioned by his circumstances, his activity may 
be really originative and free. What the determinists seem 
to forget is, as Green says, that ‘ character is only formed 
through a man’s conscious presentation to himself of objects 
as his good, as that in which his self-satisfaction is found.’ ! 


1 Proleg., § 108. 


VI. ] “THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 89 


Desires are always for objects which have a value for the 
individual. A man’s real character is reflected in his 
desires, and it is not that he is moved by some outside 
abstract force, which, being the strongest, he cannot resist, 
but it is because he puts himself into the desire or motive 
that it becomes the strongest, the one which he chooses to 
follow. My motives are really part of myself, of which all 
my actions are the outcome. Human desires, in short, are 
not merely external tendencies forcing a man this way or 
that way. They are a part of the man himself, and are 
always directed towards objects related to a self; and it 
is the satisfaction of self that makes them desirable. 

On the other hand, the fallacy lurking in the libertarian 
view arises from the fact that it also makes a hard and fast 
distinction between the self and the will. The indeter- 
minists speak as if the self had amongst its several faculties 
a will which is free in the sense of being able to act inde- 
pendently of all desires and motives. But, as a matter of 
fact, the will, as we have said, is simply the man, and it 
cannot be separated from his history, his character, and 
the objects which his character desires. To speak, as people 
sometimes do in popular language, of being free to do as 
they like—that is, to be influenced by no motive whatever, 
is not only an idea absurd in itself, but one which, if pushed 
to its consequences, would be subversive of all freedom, 
and consequently of all moral value. ‘The liberty of 
indifference,’ if the phrase means anything at all, implies 
not merely that the agent is free from all external com- 
pulsion, but that he is free from himself, not determined 
eyen by his own character. And if we ask what it really 
is that causes him to act, it must be answered, some 
caprice of the moment, some accidental impulse or arbitrary 
freak of fancy. The late Professor James makes a valiant 
attempt to solve the ‘ dilemma of determinism ’ by resort- 
ing to the idea of ‘ chance’ which he defines as a ‘ purely 
relative term, giving us no information about that which 
is predicated, except that it happens to be disconnected 
with something else—not controlled, secured or necessi- 


90 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


tated by other things in advance of its own actual pres- 
ence.’! ‘On my way home,’ he says, ‘I can choose either 
of two ways’; and suppose ‘ the choice is made twice over 
and each time falls on a different street.’ ‘Imagine that 
I first walk through Divinity Avenue, and then am set 
again at the door of this hall just as I was before the choice 
was made. Imagine then that, everything else being the 
same,? I now make a different choice and traverse Oxford 
Street. Looking outwardly at these universes of which 
my two acts are a part, can you say which is the impossible 
and accidental one and which the rational and necessary 
one?’ Perhaps an outsider could not say, but Professor 
James, if he examined his reasons, could say. He assumes 
that ‘ everything else is the same.’ But that is just what 
cannot be. A new factor has been introduced, it may be 
a whim, a sudden impulse, perhaps even a desire to upset 
calculation—a something in his character in virtue of which 
his second choice is different from his first. It is an utter 
misnomer to call it ‘chance.’ Even though he had tossed 
a coin and acted on the throw, his action would still be 
determined by the kind of man he was. 

Let us not seek to defend freedom on inadequate grounds, 
or contend for a spurious liberty. No view of the subject 
should indeed debar us from acknowledging ‘ changes in 
heart and life,’ but a misunderstanding of the doctrine of 
freedom may tend to paralyse moral initiative. The 
attempt to sunder the will and the understanding and dis- 
cover the source of freedom in the realm of the emotions, as 
the voluntarists seek to do, cannot be regarded as satis- 
factory or sound philosophy. In separating faith and 
knowledge the Ritschlian school tends to make subjective 
feeling the measure of truth and life ; while recent psycho- 
logical experiments in America with the phenomena of 
faith-healing, hypnotism and suggestion, claim to have 
discovered hitherto unsuspected potencies of the will. 
This line of thought has been welcomed by many as a relief 
from the mechanical theory of life and as a witness to moral 


1 The Will to Believe, p. 154. 2 The italics are ours. 


VI. ] ‘THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 91 


freedom and Christian hope. But so far from proving the 
sovereignty and autonomy of the will, it discloses rather 
the possibilities of its abject bondage and thra'dom. 

No one can doubt the facts which Professor James and 
others, working from the side of religious psychology, have 
recently established, or discredit the instances of conversion 
to which the annals of the Christian life so abundantly 
testify. But even conversion must not be regarded as a 
change without motives. There must be some connection 
between motive, character and act, otherwise the new 
spiritual experience would be simply a magical happening 
lacking all moral significance. If there were no continuity 
of consciousness, if I could be something to-day irrespective 
of what I was yesterday, then all we signify by contrition, 
penitence, and shame would have no real meaning. Even 
the grace of God works through natural channels and 
human influences. The past is not so much obliterated, 
as taken up into the new life and transfigured with a new 
value. 

The truth of spontaneity and initiative in life has lately 
found in M. Bergson a fresh and vigorous advocacy, and 
we cannot be too grateful to that profound thinker for his 
reassertion of some neglected aspects of freedom and his 
philosophical vindication of the doctrine which puts it in a 
new position of prominence and security. ‘ Life is Creation.’ 
‘ Reality is a perpetual growth, a Creation pursued without 
end.’ ‘Our will performs this miracle.’ ‘Every human work 
in which there is invention, every movement that manifests 
spontaneity brings something new into the world. In the 
composition of the work of genius, as in a simple free 
decision, we create what no mere assemblage of materials 
could have given.’! But yet he says that ‘life cannot 
create absolutely because it is confronted with matter. .. . 
But it seizes upon this matter which is necessity itself, and 
strives to introduce into it the greatest possible amount of 
indetermination and liberty.’ Even Bergson, though he 
emphasises so strongly immediacy and incalculableness in 


1 Creative Evolution (Eng. trans.), p. 252. 2 Idem, p. 265. 


92 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


all human action, cannot deny that the bodily arrangements 
and mechanisms are at least the basis of the working of the 
soul. Man cannot produce any change in the world except 
. in strict co-ordination with the forces and qualities of 
material things. ‘The idea in his consciousness is powerless 
save in so far as it is a guide to combinations and modifica- 
tions which are latent in reality. The man who works 
with his hands does not create out of nothing a new totality. 
Even genius is conditioned by the elements he works with 
and upon. He can do nothing with his materials beyond 
what it is in themselves to yield. This sense of co-operation 
is strongly marked in the higher grades of activity. The 
world may be in the making, as Bergson says, but it is 
being made of possibilities already inherent in it. Life 
may be incalculable, and you can never know beforehand 
what a great man, indeed, what any man may achieve, 
but even the originality of a Leonardo or a Beethoven 
cannot effect the impossible or contradict the order of 
nature. The sculptor feels that the statue is already lying 
in the marble awaiting only his creative touch to bring it 
forth. The metal is alive in the worker’s hands, coaxing 
him to make of it something beautiful.t Purpose does not 
come out of anempty mind. Freedom and initiative never 
begin entirely de novo. Life is a ‘ creation,’ but it is also, 
as M. Bergson labours to prove, an ‘ evolution.’ Our ideals 
are made out of realities. Our heaven must be shaped out 
of the materials of our earth. 

A moral personality is a self-conscious, self-determining 
being. But that is only half the reality. The other half 
is that it is a self-determining consciousness in a world. 
As Bergson is careful to tell us, the shape and extent of 
self-consciousness are determined by our relation to a 
world which acts upon us and upon which we act. Without 
a world in which we had personal business we should have 
no self-consciousness. 

The co-operation of spontaneity and necessity is implied 


1 Cf. Morris, Lects. on Art, p. 195 ; Bosanquet, Hist. of Aesthetic, p. 4455 
also Indwiduality and V value, p. 166. 


VI.] “THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 93 


in every true idea of freedom. If a man were the subject 
of necessity alone he would be merely the creature of 
mechanical causation. If he had the power of spontaneity 
only his so-called freedom would be a thing of caprice. 
Necessity means simply that man is conditioned by the 
world in which he lives. Spontaneity means, not that he 
can conjure up at a wish a dream-world of no conditions, 
but that he is not determined by anything outside of him- 
self, since the very conditions amid which he is placed may 
be transmuted by him into elements of his own character. 
Moral decisions are never isolated from ideals and tasks 
presented by our surroundings. ‘The self cannot act on any 
impulse however external till the impulse has transplanted 
itself within and become our motive. 

‘Our life,’ says Eucken, ‘is a conflict between fate and 
freedom, between being ‘“‘ given” and spontaneity. Spirit- 
ual individuality does not come to any one, but has first 
to be won by the work of life, elevating that which destiny 
brings. . . . The idea of freedom calls man to independent 
co-operation in the conflict of the worlds. It gives to the 
simply human and apparently commonplace an incompar- 
able greatness. However powerful destiny may be, it does 
not determine man entirely: for even in opposition to it 
there is liberation from it.’ } 


Tir 


It will not be necessary to dwell at any length on the 
third difficulty—the incompatibility of divine sovereignty 
and grace with moral personality. 

How to reconcile divine power and human freedom is the 
great problem which meets us on the very threshold of the 
study of man’s relation to God. The solution, in so far as 
it is possible for the mind, must be sought in the divine 
immanence. God works through man, and man acts 
through God. Reason, conscience, and will are equally 
the testimony to God’s indwelling in man and man’s in- 


1 Life's Basis and Lifes Ideals, p. 181 f. 


94 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


dwelling in God. Itis, as St. Paul says, God who worketh 
in us both to will and to do. But just because of that 
inherent power, it is we who work out our own character 
and destiny. The divine is not introduced into human life 
at particular points or in exceptional crises only. Every 
man has something of the divine in him, and when he is 
truest to himself he is most at one with God. The whole 
meaning of human personality is a growing realisation of 
the divine personality. God’s sovereignty has no meaning 
except in relation to a world of which He is sovereign, and 
His purposes can only be fulfilled through human agency. 
While His thoughts far transcend in wisdom and sublimity 
those of His creatures they must be in a sense of the same 
kind—thoughts, in other words, which beings made in His 
image can receive, love and, in a measure, share. And 
though God cannot be conceived as the author of evil, 
He may permit it and work through it, bringing order out 
of chaos, and evolving through suffering and conflict His 
sovereign purposes. 

The problem becomes acutest hen we endeavour to 
harmonise the antinomy of man’s moral freedom and the 
doctrine of grace. However insoluble the mystery, it is 
not lessened by denying one side in the interest of unity. 
Scripture boldly affirms both truths. No writer insists 
more strenuously than the Apostle Paul on the sovereign 
election of God, yet none presents with greater fervour the 
free offer of salvation. In his ethical teaching, at least, 
Paul is no determinist. Freedom is the distinctive note of 
his conception of life. Life is a great and solemn trust 
committed to each by God, for the use or abuse of which 
every man will be called to account. His missionary zeal 
would have no meaning if he did not believe that men were 
free to accept or refuse his message. Paul’s own example, 
indeed, is typical, and while he knew that he was ‘ called,’ 
he knew, too, that it lay with him to yield himself and 
present his life as a living sacrifice to God. Jesus, too, 
throughout His ministry, assumed the ability of man freely 
to accept His call to righteousness, and though He speaks 


VI. } ‘THE MIRACLE OF THE WILL’ 95 


of the change as a ‘new birth,’ a creation from above, 
beyond the strength of man to effect, He invariably makes 
His appeal to the will—‘ Follow Me,’ ‘Come unto Me.’ He 
assumes in all His dealings with individuals that they have 
the power of decision. And so far from admitting that the 
past could not be undone, and no chain of habit broken, 
the whole purpose of His message and lifework was to 
proclaim the need and possibility of a radical change in 
life. So full of hope was He for man that He despaired of 
none, not even of those who had most grievously failed, 
or most utterly turned their back on purity. The parables 
in the Third Gospel of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the 
lost son lay emphasis upon the possibility of recovery, and, 
in the case of the prodigal, specially on the ability to return 
for those who have gone astray. 

The teaching of Scripture implies that while God is the 
source of all spiritual good, and divine grace must be 
present with and precede all rightful action of the human 
will, it rests with man to respond to the divine love. No 
human soul is left destitute of the visiting of God’s spirit, 
and however rudimentary the moral life may be, no bounds 
can be set to the growth which may, and which God intends 
should, result wherever the human will is consentient. 
While, therefore, no man can claim merit in the sight of 
God, but must acknowledge his absolute dependency upon 
divine grace, no one can escape loss or blame if he wilfully 
frustrates God’s design of mercy. Whatever mystery may 
attend the subject of God’s sovereign grace, the Bible 
never presents it as negating the entire freedom of man to 
give or withhold response to the gift and leading of the 
divine spirit. 

In the deepest New Testament sense to be free is to have 
the power of acting according to one’s true nature. A 
man’s ideal is his true self, and all short of that is for him 
a limitation of freedom. Inasmuch as no ideal is ever — 
completely realised, true freedom is not so much a posses- 
sion as a progressive appropriation. It is at once a gift 
and a task. It contains the twofold idea of emancipation 


96 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. VI. 


and submission. Mere deliverance from the lower self is 
not liberty. Freedom must be completed by the appropria- 
tion of the higher self and the acceptance of the obligations 
which that self involves. It is to be acquired through sub- 
mission to the truth. ‘ Ye shall know the truth, and the 
truth shall make you free.’ A man is never so free as when 
he is the bondsman of Christ. The saying of St. Paul 
sums up the secret and essence of all true freedom: ‘ The 
law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free 
from the law of sin and death.’ 


SECTION C 
CHARACTER 








CHAPTER VII 
MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 


BEARING in mind the three fundamental ideas lying at the 
root of all ethical inquiry—End, Norm, and Motive—we 
have now to deal with the shaping forces of the Christian 
life, the making of character. In this section, therefore, 
we shall be engaged in a discussion of the ideals, laws, and 
springs of moral action. And first, What is the supreme 
good ? What is the highest for which a man should live ? 
This question determines the main problem of life. It 
forces itself irresistibly upon us to-day, and the answer to 
it is the test of every system of morals. 

But before endeavouring to determine the distinctively 
Christian ideal, as presented in the teaching of Jesus and 
interpreted by the growing Christian consciousness of man- 
kind, it may be well to review briefly some of the main 
theories of life which are pressing their claims upon our 
attention to-day. Many of these modern views have 
arisen as a reaction against traditional religion. From the 
seventeenth century onwards, and especially during the 
nineteenth, there has been a growing disposition to call in 
question the Christian conception of life. The antagonism 
reveals itself not only in a distrust of all forms of religion, 
but also in a craving for wider culture. The old certitudes 
fail to satisfy men who have acquired new habits of reflec- 
tion, and there is a disinclination to accept a scheme of life 
which seems to narrow human interests and exclude such 
departments as science, art, and politics. One reason of 
this change is to be found in the wonderful advance of 


science during the last century. Men’s minds, withdrawn 
99 


100 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


from primary, and fixed upon secondary causes, have 
refused to believe that the order of nature can be disturbed 
by supernatural intervention. Whether the modern anti- 
pathy to Christianity is justified is not the question at 
present before us. We may see in the movements of our 
day not so much a proof that the old faith is false, as an 
indication that if Christianity is to regain its power a 
radical re-statement of its truths, and a more comprehen- 
sive application of its principles to life as a whole must be 
undertaken. 

In the endeavour to find an all-embracing ideal of life 
two possibilities present themselves, arising from two 
different ways of viewing man. Human life is in one 
aspect receptive ; in another, active. It may be regarded 
as dependent. upon nature for its maintenance, or as a 
creative power whose function is not merely to receive 
what nature supplies, but to re-shape nature’s materials 
and create a new spiritual world. Receptivity and activity 
are inseparable, and form together the harmonious rhythm 
of life. 

But there has ever been a tendency to emphasise one 
or other of these aspects. The question has constantly 
arisen, Which is the more important for life—what we re- 
ceive or what we create? Accordingly two contrasted 
conceptions of life have appeared—a naturalistic and an 
idealistic. Under the first we understand those theories 
which place man in the realm of sense and explain life by 
material conditions; under the second we group such 
systems as give to life an independent creative power. 


I 
NATURALISTIC TENDENCY 


1. Naturalism has usually taken three forms, an idyllic 
or poetic, a philosophic, and a scientific, of which Rousseau, 
Feuerbach, and Haeckel may be chosen as representatives. 

(1) According to Rousseau, man is really a part of nature. 


VII. ] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 101 


and only as he conforms to her laws and finds his satis- 
faction in what she gives can he be truly happy. Nature 
is the mother of us all, and only as we allow her spirit to 
pervade and nourish our being do we really live. The 
watchword, ‘back to nature’ may be said to have given 
the first impulse to the later call of the ‘ simple life,’ which 
has arisen as a protest against the luxury, ostentation, and 
artificiality of modern times. 

(2) The philosophical form of naturalism, as expounded 
by Feuerbach, inveighs against an idealistic interpretation 
of life. The author of The Essence of Christianity started 
as a disciple of Hegel, but soon reversed the Hegelian 
principle, and pronounced the spiritual world to be a fiction 
of the mind. Man belongs essentially to the earth, and 
is governed by his senses. Self-interest is his only motive, 
and egoism his sole law of life. It was only what might be 
expected, that the ultimate consequences of this philosophy 
of the senses should be drawn by a disciple of Feuerbach, 
Max Stirner,! in whose work, 7'he Individual and His 
Property, the virtues of egoism are extolled, and contempt 
is poured upon all disinterestedness and altruism. 

(3) The latest form of naturalism is the scientific or 
monistic, as represented by Haeckel. It may be described 
as scientific in so far as its author professes to deduce the 
moral life from biological principles. In the chapter ? 
devoted to Ethics in his work, The Riddle of the Universe, 
his pronouncements upon morality are not scientifically 
derived, but simply dogmatically assumed. The under- 
lying principle of monism is that the universe is a unity 
in which no distinction exists between the material and 
the spiritual. In this world as we know it there reigns 
only one kind of law, the invariable law of nature. The 
so-called spiritual life of man is not an independent realm 
having its own rights and aims ; it belongs wholly to nature. 
The moral world is a province of the physical, and the key 
to all the departments of reality is to be found in science 


1 Kasper Schmidt, Der Hinzige und sein Higentum. 
2 Haeckel, op. cit., chap. xix. 


102 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


alone. The doctrine of evolution is brought into the 
service of monism, and the attempt is made to prove 
that in the very process of biological development’ human 
thought, moral sentiment, and social instincts have been 
evolved. With a curious sacrifice of consistency, Haeckel 
does not agree with Feuerbach in exalting egoism to the 
place of supremacy in the moral life. He recognises two 
kinds of duty—duty to self and duty to society. The 
social sense once created is permanent, and rises to ever- 
fresh developments. But benevolence, like every other 
obligation, is, according to evolutionary monism, a product 
evolved from the battle of existence. Traced to its source, 
it has its spring in the physical organism, and is but an 
enlargement of the ego. 

The monistic naturalism of Haeckel offers no high ideal 
to life. Its Ethics is but a glorified egoism. Its dictates 
never rise above the impulses derived from nature. But 
not religion only with its kingdom of God, nor morality 
only with its imperatives, nor art with its power of ideal- 
ising the world of nature, but even science itself, with its 
claim to unify and organise facts, proves that man stands 
apart from, and is higher than, the material world. The 
very existence of such activities in the invisible realm 
renders vain every attempt to reduce the spiritual to the 
natural, and to make truth, goodness and beauty mere 
outgrowths of nature. 

2. On its ethical side naturalism is closely associated 
with the theory of life which bears the name of utilitarianism 
—the theory which regards pleasure or profit as the aim of 
man. In its most independent form Hedonism can hardly 
be said to exist now as a reasoned theory. Carried out to 
its extreme consequences it reduces man to a mere animal. 
Hence a type of reflective egoism has taken the place of 
animal gratification, and the idea of ulterior benefit has 
succeeded to that of immediate pleasure. 

The names associated with this theory of morals are 
those of Hobbes, Bentham, and the two Mills. Hobbes, 


1 Haeckel, op. cit., chap. xix. p. 140. 


Vit. J MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 103 


who preaches undiluted egoism,' may be regarded as the 
father of utilitarianism. But the title was first applied to 
the school of Bentham.? Bentham’s watchword was 
‘utility > expressed in his famous formula—‘ The greatest 
happiness of the greatest number.’ While renouncing the 
abstract ideal of equality, he yet asserted the equal claim 
of every individual to happiness. In its distribution 
‘each is to count for one, and no one for more than one.’ 
Hence Bentham insisted upon an exact quantitative 
calculation of the consequences of our actions as the only 
sufficient guide to conduct. The end is the production of 
the maximum of pleasure and the minimum of pain. 

J. 8S. Mill modified considerably the principle of utility 
by introducing the doctrine of the qualitative difference in 
pleasures.2 While Bentham assumed self-interest as the 
only motive of conduct, Mill affirmed the possibility of 
altruism in the motive as well as in the end or criterion of 
right actions. Thus the idea of utility was extended to 
embrace higher moral ends. But the antithesis between 
the ‘self’ and the ‘other’ was not overcome. To intro- 
duce the notion of sympathy, as Adam Smith and others 
did, is to beg the question. Try as you will, you cannot 
deduce benevolence from selfishness. The question for the 
utilitarian must always arise, ‘How far ought I to follow 
my natural desires, and how far my altruistic?’ There 
must be a constant conflict, and he can only be at peace 
with himself by striking a balance. The utilitarian must 
be a legalist. The principle of self-sacrifice does not spring 
from his inner being. Truth, love, sacrifice—all that gives 
to man his true worth as a being standing in vital relation 
to God—are only artificial adaptations based on convenience 
and general advantage. 

3. Evolutionary ethics, as expounded by Spencer and 
others, though employing utilitarian principles, affords an 
ampler and more plausible account of life than early 


1 Hobbes’ Leviathan, chap. vi. 
By Pringle-Pattison, Philos. Radicals, and J. Seth’s Hng. Philosophers, 
4 


p. 240. 
3 Utilitarianism. chap. ii. 4 Idem, chap. iii 


104 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


Hedonism.!' The evolutionists have enriched the idea of 
happiness by quietly slipping in many ends which really 
belong to the idea of the ‘ good.’ As the term ‘ gravitation ’ 
was the magic word of the eighteenth century, so the word 
‘evolution’ is the talisman of the present age. It must 
be admitted that it is a sublime and fruitful idea. It 
explains much in nature and history which the old static 
notion failed to account for. It has a great deal to teach us 
even in the spiritual sphere. But when applied to life as a 
whole, and when it is assumed to be the sole explanation of 
moral action, it is apt to rob the will of its initiative and 
reduce all moral achievements to merely natural factors in 
an unfolding drama of life. The soul itself, with all its 
manifestations and experiences, is treated simply as the 
resultant and harmonious effect of adaptation to environ- 
ment. Man is regarded as the highest animal, the most 
richly specialised organism—the last: of a long series in the 
development of life, the outstanding feature of which is the 
acquired power of complete adjustment to the world, of 
which it is a part. Strictly speaking, there is no room for 
a personal God in this mechanical theory of the universe. 
The world becomes inevitably ‘ the Be all and the End all.’ 
Hence, as might be expected, while evolutionary Ethics 
claims to cover the whole range of this present life, it does 
not pretend to extend into the regions of the hereafter. 
It is concerned only with what it conceives to be the highest 
earthly good—the material and social well-being of mankind. 
But no theory of life can be pronounced satisfactory which 
explains man in terms of this earth alone. The ‘ Great 
Unknown’ which Mr. Spencer posits? as the ultimate 
source of all power, is a force to be reckoned with; and, 
known or unknown, is the mightiest factor in all life’s 
experiences. Man’s spiritual nature in its whole range 
cannot be treated as of no account. ‘The powers of the 
world to come’ have an essential bearing upon human 

1 Cf. Spencer, Data of Ethics, p. 275; also Social Statics. In the former 
work an attempt is made to exhibit the biological significance of pleasure and 


the relation between egoism and altruism. 
2 See First Principles, p. 166 ff. 


vu. ] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 105 


conduct in this world. They shape our thoughts and deter- 
mine our ideals. Hence any view of life which excludes 
from consideration the spiritual side of man, and limits his 
horizon by the things of this earth must of necessity be 
inadequate and unsatisfactory. 

4. Closely connected with, and, indeed, arising out of, 
the evolutionary theory, another type of thought, prevalent 
to-day, falls to be noted—the socialistic tendency. It is now 
universally recognised that the individual cannot be treated 
as an isolated being, but only in relation to society of which 
he is a part. The emphasis is laid upon the solidarity of 
mankind, and man is explained by such social facts as 
heredity and environment. Marx and Engels, the pioneers 
of the socialistic movement, accepted in the fullest sense 
the scientific doctrine of evolution. So far from being a 
mere Utopian dream, Marx contends that Socialism is the 
inevitable outcome of the movement of modern society. 
The aim of the agitation is to bring men to a clear con- 
sciousness of a process which is going forward in all 
countries where the modern industrial methods prevail. 
Democracy must come to itself and assume its rights. The 
keynote of the past has been the exploitation of man by man 
in the three forms of slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour. 
The keynote of the future must be the exploitation of the 
earth by man associated to man. The practical aim of 
Socialism is that industry is to be carried on by associated 
labourers jointly owning the means of production. Here, 
again, the all-pervading ideal is—the general good of 
society—the happiness of the greatest number. The 
reduction of all aims to a common level, the equalising 
of social conditions, the direction and control of all private 
interests and personal endeavours, are to be means to one 
end—the material good of the community. Socialism is 
not, however, confined to an agitation for material welfare. 
The industrial aspect of it is only a phase of a larger move- 
ment. On its ethical side it is the outcome of a strong 
aspiration after a higher life.1 The world is awakening to 


1See Kirkup, An Inquiry into Socialism, p. 19. 


106 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


the fact that the majority of the human family has been 
virtually excluded from all participation in man’s inherit- 
ance of knowledge and culture. ‘The labouring classes have 
been from time immemorial sunk in drudgery and ignorance, 
bearing the burden of society without sharing in its happi- 
ness. It is contended that every man ought to have an 
opportunity of making the most of his life and obtaining 
full freedom for the development of body and mind. The 
aim to secure justice for the many, to protect the weak 
against the strong, to mitigate the fierceness of competition, 
to bring about a better understanding between capital and 
labour, and to gain for all a more elevated and expansive 
existence, is not merely consistent with, but indispensable 
to, a true Christian conception of life. But the question 
which naturally arises is, how this reformation is to be 
brought about. Never before have so many revolutionary 
schemes been proposed, and so many social panaceas for a 
better world set forth. It is, indeed, a hopeful sign of the 
times that the age of unconcern is gone and the temper of 
cautious inaction has yielded to scientific diagnosis and 
courageous treatment. It must not be forgotten, how- 
ever, that the exclusively utilitarian position tends to lower 
the moral ideal, and that the exaggerated emphasis upon 
the social aspect of life fails to do justice to the independence 
of the individual. The tendency of modern political 
thought is to increase the control of government, and to 
regard all departments of activity as branches of the state, 
to be held and worked for the general good of the com- 
munity. Thus there is a danger that the individual may 
gradually lose all initiative, and life be impoverished under 
a coercive mechanical system. 

Socialism in its extreme form might easily become a new 
kind of tyranny. By the establishment of collectivism, 
by making the state the sole owner of all wealth, the sole 
employer of labour, and the controller of science and art, 
as well as of education and religion, there is a danger of 
crushing the spiritual side of man, and giving to all life and 
endeavour a merely naturalistic character and content. 


vu] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 107 


5. It was inevitable that an exaggerated insistence upon 
the importance of society should provoke an equally one- 
sided emphasis upon the worth of the individual, and that 
as a protest against the demands of Socialism there should 
arise a form of subjectivism which aims at complete self- 
affirmation. 

(1) This tendency has received the name of esthetic- 
individualism. As a conception of life it may be regarded 
as intermediate between naturalism and idealism. While 
rooted in a materialistic view of life, it is moulded in the 
hands of its best advocates by spiritual aspirations. Its 
standpoint may be characterised as a theory of existence 
which seeks the highest value of life in the realm of the 
beautiful, and which therefore endeavours to promote the 
supreme good of the individual through devotion to art. 
Not only does the cultivation of art tend in itself to elevate 
life by concentrating the soul upon all that is fairest and 
noblest in the world, but the best means of enriching and 
ennobling life is to regard life itself as a work of art. This 
view of existence, it is claimed, widens the scope of experi- 
ence, and leads us into ampler worlds of interest and 
enjoyment. It aims at giving to personality a rounded 
completeness, and bringing the manifold powers and 
passions of man into harmonious unity. As a theory of 
life it is not new. Already Plato, and still more Aristotle, 
maintained that a true man must seek his highest satis- 
faction not in the possession of external things, but in the 
most complete manifestation of his faculties. Individual 
estheticism largely animated the Romantic movement of 
Germany at the beginning of last century. But probably 
the best illustration of it is to be found in Goethe and 
Schiller ; while in our country Matthew Arnold has given 
it a powerful and persuasive exposition. It was the aim 
of Goethe to mould his life into a work of art, and all his 
activities and poetic aspirations were subordinated to this 
end. The beautiful harmonious life is the true life, the 
well-rounded whole from which must be banished every- 
thing narrow, vulgar, and distasteful, and in which every- 


108 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


thing fair and noble must find expression. ‘ Each indi- 
vidual,’ says Schiller, ‘is at once fitted and destined for a 
pure ideal manhood.’ And the attainment of this ideal 
requires from us the most zealous self-culture and a con- 
centration of effort upon our own peculiar gifts.} 

A new form of estheticism has lately appeared which 
pretends to combine morality and culture. ‘The New 
Kthic,’ * as it is called, protests against the sombreness of 
religious traditions and the rigidity of moral restrictions, 
and assigns to art the function of emancipating man and 
idealising life. But what this movement really offers under 
its new catchword is simply a subtler form of epicureanism, 
a finer self-indulgence. It is the expression of a desire to 
be free from all restraint, to close one’s eyes to the ‘ majesty 
of human suffering,’ allowing one’s thoughts to dwell only 
upon the agreeable and gay in life. It regards man as 
simply the sum-total of his natural inclinations, and con- 
ceives duty to be nothing else than the endeavour to bring 
these into equilibrium. 

That the esthetic culture of life is a legitimate element 
in Christian morality can hardly be denied by any one who 
has pondered the meaning in all its breadth of the natural 
simplicity and spiritual beauty of the manifestation of the 
Son of Man. The beautiful, the good, and the true are 
intimately connected, and constitute together all that is 
conceivably highest in life. Christian Ethics ought to 
include everything that is gracious and fair; and any 
theory of life that has no room for joy and beauty, for 
laughter and song, for appreciation of artistic or poetic 
expression, is surely deficient. But it is one thing to 
acknowledge these things ; it is another to make them the 
whole of existence. We live in a world in which much else 
besides beauty and joy exists, and it is not by shirking 
contact with the unlovely phases of experience, but by 
resolutely accepting the ministry of sorrow they impose, 


1 See Liitgert, Natur und Geist Gottes, for striking chapter on Gdethe’s 
Ethik, p. 121f. 
2 Cf. Eucken, Main Currents of Modern Thought, p. 401 f. 


vul.] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 109 


that we attain to our highest selves. The narrow Puritan- 
ism of a past age may need the corrective of the broader 
Humanism of to-day, but not less must the Ethic of self- 
culture be reinforced by the Ethic of self-sacrifice. We 
may not cultivate the beauty of life at the cost of duty, 
nor forget that it is often only through the immolation of 
self that the self can be realised. 

(2) While the Romantic movement, of which Goethe was 
the most illustrious representative, did much to enlarge 
life and ennoble the whole expanse of being, its extreme 
subjectivism and aristocratic exclusiveness found ultimate 
expression (a) in the pessimism of Schopenhauer, and 
the arrogance of Nietzsche. The alliance between art 
and morality was dissolved. The imagination scorned all 
fetters and, in its craving for novelty and contempt of con- 
vention, became the organ of individual caprice and licence. 
In Nietzsche—that strange erratic genius—at once artist, 
philosopher, and rhapsodist—this philosophy of life found 
brilliant if bizarre utterance. If Schopenhauer reduces 
existence to nothing, and finds in oblivion and extinction 
its solution, (6) Nietzsche seeks rather to magnify life by 
striking the note of a proud and defiant optimism. He 
claims for the individual limitless rights ; and, repudiating 
all moral ties, asserts the complete sovereignty of the self- 
sufficing ego. With a deep-rooted hatred of the prevailing 
tendencies of civilisation, he combines a vehement desire for 
a richer and unrestrained development of human power. 
He would not only revalue all moral values, but reverse 
all ideas of right and wrong. He would soar ‘ beyond good 
and evil,’ declaring that the prevailing judgments of man- 
kind are pernicious prejudices which have too long tyran- 
nised over the world. He acknowledges himself to be not 
a moralist, but an ‘immoralist,’ and he bids us break in 
pieces the ancient tables of the Decalogue. Christianity 
is the most debasing form of slave-morality. It has made 
a merit of weakness and servility, and given the name of 
virtue to such imbecilities as meekness and self-sacrifice. 
He calls upon the individual to exalt himself. The man of 


110 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


the future is to be the man of self-mastery and virile force, 
‘the Superman,’ who is to crush under his heel the cringing 
herd of weaklings who have hitherto possessed the world. 
The earth is for the strong, the capable, the few. A mighty 
race, self-assertive, full of vitality and will, is the goal of 
humanity. The vital significance of Nietzsche’s radicalism 
lies less in its positive achievement than in its stimulating 
effect. Though his account of Christianity is a caricature, 
his strong invective has done much to correct the senti- 
mental rose-water view of the Christian faith which has 
been current in some pietistic circles. The Superman, with 
all its vagueness, is a noble, inspiring ideal. The problem 
of the race is to produce a higher manhood, to realise which 
there is need for sacrifice and courage. Nietzsche is the 
spiritual father and forerunner of the Eugenics. The 
Superman is not born, he is bred. Our passions must be 
our servants. Obedience and fidelity, self-discipline and 
courage are the virtues upon which he insists. ‘Be 
master of life... .’ ‘I call you to a new nobility. Ye 
shall become the procreators and sowers of the future.’ 

While there is much that is suggestive in Nietzsche’s 
scathing criticisms, and many passages of striking beauty 
in his books, he is stronger in his denials than his affirma- 
tions, and it is the negative side that his followers have 
fastened upon and developed. Sudermann, the novelist, 
has carried his philosophy of egoism to its extreme. This 
writer, in a work entitled Sodom’s End, affirms that there 
is nothing holy and nothing evil. There is no such thing 
as duty or love. Only nerves exist. The ‘Superman’ 
becomes a monster. Such teaching can scarcely be taken 
seriously. It conveys no helpful message. It is the per- 
version of life’s ideal. 

As a passing phase of thought it is interesting, but it 
solves no problems ; it advances no truths. It resembles 
a whirlwind which helps to clear the air and drive away 
superfluous leaves, but it does little to quicken or expand 
new seeds of life. 


VIL.) MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 111 


II 
IDEALISTIC TENDENCY 


1. Modern Idealism was inaugurated by Kant. Kant’s 
significance for thought lies in his twofold demand for a 
new basis of knowledge and morality. He conceived that 
both are possible, and that both are interdependent, and 
have but one solution. The solution, however, could only 
be achieved by a radical change of method, and by the 
introduction of new standards of value. Kant’s theory of 
morals was an attempt to reconcile the two opposing ethical 
principles which were current in the eighteenth century. 
On the one side, the Realists treated man simply as a 
natural being, and accordingly demanded a pursuance of 
his natural impulses. On the other side, the Dogmatists 
conceived that conduct must be governed by divine sanc- 
tions. Both theories agreed in regarding happiness as the 
end of life ; the one the happiness of sensuous enjoyment ; 
the other, that of divine favour. Both set an end outside 
of man himself as the basis of their ethical doctrine. Kant 
was dissatisfied with this explanation of the moral life. 
The question, therefore, which arises is, Whence comes the 
idea of duty which is an undeniable fact of our experience ? 
lf it came merely from without, it could never speak to us 
with absolute authority, nor claim unquestioning obedience. 
That which comes from without depends for its justification 
upon some consequence external to our action, and must 
be based, indeed, upon some excitement of reward or pain. 
But that would destroy it as a moral good ; since nothing 
can be morally good that is not pursued for its own sake. 
Kant, therefore, seeks to show that the law of the moral 
life must originate within us, must spring from an inherent 
principle of our own rational nature. Hence the distinc- 
tive feature of Kant’s moral theory is the enunciation of 
the ‘ Categorical Imperative ’—the supreme inner demand 
of reason. From this principle of autonomy there arise at 
once the notions of man’s freedom and the law’s univer- 


112 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


sality. Self-determination is the presupposition of all 
morality. But what is true for one is true for all. Each 
man is a member of a rational order, and possesses the 
inalienable independence and the moral dignity of being 
an end in himself. Hence the formula of all duty is, ‘ Act 
from a maxim at all times fit to be a universal law.’ 

It is the merit of Kant that he has given clear expression 
to the majesty of the moral law. No thinker has more 
strongly asserted man’s spiritual nature or done more to 
free the ideal of duty from all individual narrowness and 
selfish interest. But Kant’s principle of duty labours 
under the defect, that while it determines the form, it tells 
us nothing of the content of duty. We learn from him 
the grandeur of the moral law, but not its essence or 
motive-power. He does not clearly explain what it is in 
the inner nature of man that gives to obligation its uni- 
versal validity or even its dominating force. As a recent 
writer truly says, ‘In order that morality may be possible 
at all, its law must be realised in me, but while the way in 
which it is realised is mine, the content is not mine ; other- 
wise the whole conception of obligation is destroyed.’1 If 
the soul’s function is purely formal how can we attain to a 
self-contained life ? Moreover, if the freedom which Kant 
assigns to man is really to achieve a higher ideal and bring 
forth a new world, must there not be some spiritual power 
or energy, some dynamic force, which, while it is within 
man, is also without, and independent of, him? ‘ Duty 
for duty’s sake’ lacks lifting power, and is the essence of 
legalism. Love, after all, is the fulfilling of the law. 

2. To overcome the Kantian abstraction, and give con- 
tent to the formal law of reason was the aim of the ideal- 
istic writers who succeeded him. Fichte conceived of mor- 
ality as action—self-consciousness realising itself in a world 
of deeds. Hegel started with the Idea as the source of all 
reality, and developed the conception of Personality attain- 
ing self-realisation through the growing consciousness of 
the world and of God. Personality involves capacity. The 


1 Macmillan, The Crowning Phase of the Critical Philosophy, p. 28. 


Vil. ] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 113 


law of life, therefore, is, ‘ Be a person and respect others as 
persons.’ Man only comes to himself as he becomes 
conscious that his life is rooted in a larger self. Morality 
is just the gradual unfolding of an eternal purpose whose 
whole is the perfection of humanity. It has been objected 
that the idea of life as an evolutionary process, which finds 
its most imposing embodiment in the system of Hegel, if 
consistently carried out, destroys all personal motive and 
self-determining activity, and reduces the history of the 
world to a soulless mechanism. Hegel himself was aware 
of this objection, and the whole aim of his philosophy was 
to show that personality has no meaning if it be not the 
growing consciousness of the infinite. The more recent 
exponents of his teaching have endeavoured to prove that 
the individual, so far from being suppressed, is really 
expressed in the process, that, indeed, while the universal 
life underlies, unifies, and directs the particular phases of 
existence, the individual in realising himself is at the same 
time determining and evolving the larger spiritual world— 
a world already implicitly present in his earliest conscious- 
ness and first strivings. The absolute is indeed within us 
from the very beginning, but we have to work it out. 
Hence life is achieved through conflict. The universe is 
not a place for pleasure or apathy. It is a place for soul- 
making. No rest is to be found by an indolent withdrawal 
from the world of reality. ‘In one way or another, in 
labour, in learning, and in religion, every man has his 
pilgrimage to make, his self to remould and to acquire, his 
world and surroundings to transform. .. . It is in this 
adventure, and not apart from it, that we find and main- 
tain the personality which we suppose ourselves to possess 
ab initio. 2 The soul is a world in itself; but it is not, 
and must not be treated as, an isolated personality imper- 
vious to the mind of others. At each stage of its evolution 
it is the focus and expression of a larger world. A man 
does not value himself as a detached subject, but as the 


1 Hegel, Phil. of Right, p. 4 
2 Bosanquet, The Principles ey Individuality and Value. 


114 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


inheritor of gifts which are focused in him. Man, in 
short, is a trustee for the world ; and suffering and priva- 
tion are among his opportunities. The question for each 
is, How much can he make of them? Something above us 
there must be to make us do and dare and hope, and the 
important thing is not one’s separate destiny, but the 
completeness of experience and one’s contribution to it.? 

3. It was inevitable that there should arise a reaction 
against the extreme Intellectualism of Hegel and his school, 
and that a conception of existence which lays the emphasis 
upon the claims of practical life should grow in favour. 
The pursuit of knowledge tended to become merely a means 
of promoting human well-being. 

The first definite attempt to formulate a specific theory 
of knowledge with this practical aim in view takes the form 
of what is known as ‘ Pragmatism.’ The modern use of 
this term is chiefly connected with the name of the late 
Professor James, to whose brilliant writings we are largely 
indebted for the elucidation of its meaning. ‘ Pragmatism,’ 
says James, ‘represents the empiricist attitude both in a 
more radical and less objectionable form than it has ever 
yet assumed.’ ? It agrees with utilitarianism in explaining 
practical aspects, and with positivism in disdaining useless 
abstractions. It claims to be a method rather than a 
system of philosophy. And its method consists in bringing 
the pursuit of knowledge into close relationship with life. 
Nothing is to be regarded as true which cannot be justified 
by its value for man. The hypothesis which on the whole 
works best, which most aptly fits the circumstances of a 
particular case, is true. The emphasis is laid not on 
absolute principles, but on consequences. We must not 
consider things as they are in themselves, but in their 
reference to the good of mankind. Itis useless, for example, 
to speculate about the existence of God. If the hypothesis 
of a deity works satisfactorily, if the best results follow for 
the moral well-being of humanity by believing in a God, 


1 Bosanquet, The Principles of Individuality and Value. 
2 Pragmatism, p. 51. 


VII. ] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 115 


then the hypothesis may be taken as true. It is true at 
least for us. Truth, according to Pragmatism, has no 
independent existence. It is wholly subjective, relative, 
instrumental. Its only test is its utility, its workableness. 

This view of truth, though supported by much ingenuity 
and brilliance, would seem to contradict the very idea of 
truth, and to be subversive of all moral values. If truth 
has no independent validity, if it is not something to be 
sought for itself, irrespective of the inclinations and 
interests of man, then its pursuit can bring no real enrich- 
ment to our spiritual being. It remains something alien 
and external, a mere arbitrary appendix of the self. It is 
not the essence and standard of human life. If its sole test 
is what is advantageous or pleasant it sinks into a merely 
utilitarian opinion or selfish bias. ‘Truth,’ says Eucken, 
‘can only exist as an end in itself. Instrumental truth is 
no truth at all.’ ? 

According to this theory, moreover, truth is apt to be 
broken up into a number of separate fragments without 
correlation or integrating unity. There will be as many 
hypotheses as there are individual interests. The truth 
that seems to work best for one man or one age may not 
be the truth that serves another. In the collision of opin- 
ions who is to arbitrate? If it be the institutions and 
customs of to-day, the present state of morals, that is to 
be the measure of what is good, then we seem to be com- 
mitted to a condition of stagnancy, and involved in the 
quest of a doubtful gain. 

As might be expected, Professor James’s view of truth 
determines his view of the world. It is pluralistic, not 
monistic ; melioristic, not optimistic. It is characteristic 
of him that when he discusses the question, Is life worth 
living ? his answer practically is, ‘ Yes, if you believe it is.’ 
Pragmatism is put forward as the mediator between two 
opposite tendencies, those of ‘tender-mindedness’ and 
“tough-mindedness.’ ‘The tendency to rest in the Absol- 
ute is the characteristic mark of the tender-minded; the 


1 Main Currents of Thought, p. 78. 


116 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


radically tough-minded, on the other hand, needs no reli- 
gion at all.’! There is something to be said for both of 
these views, James thinks, and a compromise will probably 
best meet the case. Hence, against these two ways of 
accepting the universe, he maintains the pragmatic faith 
which is at once theistic, pluralistic, and melioristic. He 
accepts a personal power as a workable theory of the uni- 
verse. But God need not be infinite or all-inclusive, for 
‘all that the facts require is that the power should be both 
other and larger than our common selves.’? Such a con- 
ception of God, even on James’s own admission, is akin to 
polytheism. And such polytheism implies a pluralistic 
view of the universe. The invisible order, in which we hope 
to realise our larger life, is a world which does not grow 
integrally in accordance with the preconceived plan of a 
single architect, ‘ but piecemeal! by the contributions of its 
several parts.’ We make the world to our will, and ‘add 
our fiat to the fiat of the creator.’ With regard to the 
supreme question of human destiny Professor James’s view 
is what he calls ‘ melioristic.’ There is a striving for better 
things, but what the ultimate outcome will be, no one can 
say. For the world is still in the making. Life is a risk. 
It has many possibilities. Good and evil are intermingled, 
and will continue so to be. It is a pluralistic world just 
because the will of man is free, and predetermination is ex- 
cluded. If good was assured as the final goal of ill, and 
there was no sense of venture, no possibility of loss or fail- 
ure, then life would lack interest, and moral effort would 
be shorn of reality and incentive. 

In Professor James’s philosophy of life there is much that 
is original and stimulating, and it draws attention to facts 
of experience and modes of thought which we were in danger 
of overlooking. It has compelled us to consider the 
psychological bases of personality, and to lay more stress 
upon the power of the will and individual choice in the 
determining of character and destiny. It is pre-eminently 


1 Pragmatism, p. 278f.; also Varieties of Relig. sepaghed ap p. 525 f. 
2 Idem, p. 299. 3 Idem, p. 290. 


VII. ] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 117 


a philosophy of action, and it emphasises an aspect of life 
which intellectualism was prone to neglect—the function 
of personal endeavour and initiative in the making of the 
world. It postulates the reality of a living God who invites 
our co-operation, and it encourages our belief in a higher 
spiritual order which it is within our power to achieve. 

Pragmatism has hitherto made headway chiefly in 
America and Britain, but on its activistic side it is akin 
to a new philosophical movement which has appeared in 
France and Germany. The name generally given to this 
tendency is ‘Activism’ or ‘ Vitalism’—a title chosen 
probably in order to emphasise the self-activity of the per- 
sonal consciousness directed towards a world which it at 
once conquers and creates. The authors of this latest 
movement are the Frenchman, Henri Bergson, and the 
German, Rudolf Eucken. Differing widely in their methods 
and even in their conclusions, they agree in making a direct 
attack both upon the realism and the intellectualism of 
the past, and in their conviction that the world is not a 
‘strung along universe,’ as the late Professor James puts 
it, but a world that is being made by the creative power 
and personal freedom of man. While Eucken has for many 
years occupied a position of commanding influence in the 
realm of thought, Bergson has only recently come into 
notice. The publication of his striking work, Creative 
Evolution, marks an epoch in speculation, and is awakening 
the interest of the philosophical world.} 

4, With his passion for symmetry and completeness 
Bergson has evolved a whole theory of the universe, resort- 

1 The writer regrets that the work of the Italian, Benedetto Croce, 
Philosophy of the Practical, Economic and Ethic (Part 1. of Philosophy of 
the Spirit), came to his knowledge too late to permit a consideration of its 
ethical teaching in this volume. Croce is a thinker of great originality, of 
whom we are likely to hear much in the future, and whose philosophy will 
have to be reckoned with. Though independent of others, his view of life 
has affinities with that of Hegel. He maintains the doctrine of develop- 
ment of opposites, but avoids Hegel's insistence upon the concept of nature 
as a mode of reality opposed to the spirit. Spirit is reality, the whole 
reality, and therefore the universal. It has two activities, theoretic and 
practical. With the theoretic man understands the universe; with the 


practical he changes it. The Will is the man, and freedom is finding himsel! 
in the Whole. 


118 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (CH. 


ing, strange to say, to a form of reasoning that implies the 
validity of logic, the instrument of the intellect which he 
never wearies of impugning. Without entering upon his 
merely metaphysical speculations, we fix upon his theory 
of consciousness—the relation of life to the material world 
—as involving certain ethical consequences bearing upon 
our subject. The idea of freedom is the corner-stone of 
Bergson’s system, and his whole philosophy is a powerful 
vindication of the independence and self-determination of 
the human will. Life is free, spontaneous, creative and 
incalculable ; determined neither by natural law nor logical 
sequence. It can break through all causation and assert 
its own right. It is not, indeed, unrelated to matter, since 
it has to find its exercise in a material world. Matter plays 
at once, as he himself says, the réle of obstacle and stimulus.} 
But it is not the world of things which legislates for man ; 
it is man who legislates for it. Bergson’s object is to vindi- 
cate the autonomy of consciousness, and his entire philo- 
sophy is a protest against every claim of determinism to 
dominate life. By introducing the creative will before all 
development, he displaces mechanical force, and makes 
the whole evolution of life dependent upon the ‘ vital 
impulse’ which pushes forward against all obstacles to ever 
higher and higher efficiency. Similarly, by drawing a 
distinction between intellect and intuition, he shows that 
the latter is the truly creative power in man which pene- 
trates to the heart of reality and shapes its own world. 
Intellect and instinct have been developed along divergent 
lines. The intellect has merely a practical function. It 
is related to the needs of action.? It is the faculty of 
manufacturing artificial objects, especially tools to make 
tools.? It deals with solids and geometrical figures, and its 
instrument is logic. But according to Bergson it has an 
inherent incapacity to deal with life. When we contrast 
the rigidity and superficiality of intellect with the fluidity, 
sympathy and intimacy of intuition, we see at once wherein 


1 Hibbert Journal, April 1912. . 2 Evol. Creat., p. 161, 
3 Idem, p. 146. 4 Idem, p. 165, 


vit.] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 119 


lies the true creative power of man. Development, when 
carried too exclusively along the lines of intellect, means 
loss of will-power ; and we have seen how, not individuals 
alone, but entire nations, may be crushed and destroyed 
by a too rigid devotion to mechanical and stereotyped 
methods of thought. Only life is adequate to deal with 
life. Let us give free expression to the intuitive and sym- 
pathetic force within us, ‘feel the wild pulsation of life,’ 
if we would conquer the world and come to our own. 
‘ The spectacle,’ says Bergson, ‘ of ‘life from the very begin- 
ning down to man suggests to us the image of a current 
of consciousness which flows down into matter as into a 
tunnel, most of whose endeavours to advance... are 
stopped by a rock that is too hard, but which, in one 
direction at least, prove successful, and break out into the 
light once more.’! But there life does not stop. 


‘ All tended to mankind, 
But in completed man begins anew 
A tendency to God.’ ? 


This creative consciousness still pushes on, giving to matter 
its own life, and drawing from matter its nutriment and 
strength. The effort is painful, but in making it we feel 
that it is precious, more precious perhaps than the particu- 
lar work it results in, because through it we have been 
making ourselves, ‘raising ourselves above ourselves.’ 
And in this there is the true joy of life—the joy which every 
creator feels—the joy of achievement and triumph. Thus 
not only is the self being created, but the world is being 
made—original and incalculable—not according to a pre- 
conceived plan or logical sequence, but by the free spon- 
taneous will of man. 

The soul is the creative force—the real productive agent 
of novelty in the world. The strange thing is that the soul 
creates not the world only, but itself. Whence comes 
this mystic power? What is the origin of the soul? 
Bergson does not say. But in one passage he suggests that 


1 Hibbert Journal, 2 Browning. 


120 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


possibly the world of matter and consciousness have the 
same origin—the principle of life which is the great prius 
of all that is and is to be. But Bergson’s ‘élan vital,’ 
though more satisfactory than the first cause of the natu- 
ralist, or the ‘great unknown’ of the evolutionist, or even 
than some forms of the absolute, is itself admittedly out- 
side the pale of reason—inexplicable, indefinable, and 
incalculable. 

The new ‘vitalism’ unfolds a living self-evolving universe, 
a restless, unfinished and never-to-be-finished development 
—the scope and goal of which cannot be foreseen or ex- 
plained. An infinite number of possibilities open out; 
which the soul will follow no one can tell; why it follows 
this direction rather than that, no one can see. ‘There 
seems to be no room here for teleology or purposiveness ; 
and though Bergson has not yet worked out the theological 
and ethical implications of his theory, as far as we can at 
present say the personality and imminence of a Divine 
Being are excluded. Though Bergson never refers to Hegel 
by name, he seems to be specially concerned in refuting 
the philosophy of the Absolute, according to which the world 
is conceived as the evolution of the infinite mind. If ‘ tout 
est donné,’ says Bergson, if all is given beforehand, ‘ why 
do over again what has already been completed, thus 
reducing life and endeavour to a mere sham.’ But even 
allowing the force of that objection, the idea of a ‘ world 
in the making,’ though it appeals to the popular mind, is 
not quite free from ambiguity. In one sense it states a 
platitude—a truth, indeed, which is not excluded from an 
absolute or teleological conception of life. But if it is 
implied that the world, because it is in process of production, 
may violate reason and take some capricious form, the idea 
is absurdly false, so long as we are what we are, and the 
human mind is what it is. The real must always be the 
rational. All enterprise and effort are based on the faith 
that we belong to a rational world. Though we cannot 
predict what form the world will ultimately take, we can 
at least be sure that it can assume no character which will 


vir. ] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 121 


contradict the nature of intelligence. Even in the making 
of a world, if life has any moral worth and meaning at all, 
there must be rational purpose. There are creation and 
initiative in man assuredly, but they must not be inter- 
preted as activities which deviate into paths of grotesque 
and arbitrary fancy. Our actions and ideas must issue 
from our world. Even a poem or work of art must make 
its appeal to the universal mind ; any other kind of origin- 
ality would wholly lack human interest and sever all 
creation and life from their root in human nature. But 
at least we must acknowledge that Bergson has done to 
the world of thought the great service of liberating us from 
the bonds of matter and the thraldom of a fatalistic neces- 
sity. Itis his merit that he has lifted from man the burden 
of a hard determinism, and vindicated the freedom, choice, 
and initiative of the human spirit. If he has no distinctly 
Christian message, he has at least disclosed for the soul 
the possibility of new beginnings, and has shown that there 
is room in the spiritual life, as the basis of all upward 
striving, for change of heart and conversion of life. 

5. In the philosophy of Eucken there is much that is in 
harmony with that of Bergson; but there are also impor- 
tant differences. Common to both is a reaction against 
formalism and intellectualism. Neither claims that we 
can gain more than ‘the knowledge of a direction’ in 
which the solution of the problem may be sought. It is not 
a ‘given’ or finished world with which we have to do. 
‘The triumph of life is expressed by creation,’ says Eucken, 
“I mean the creation of self by self.’ ‘ We live in the con- 
viction,’ he says again, ‘ that the possibilities of the uni- 
verse have not yet been played out,! but that our spiritual 
life still finds itself battling in mid-flood with much of the 
world’s work still before us.’ While Bergson confines him- 
self rigidly to the metaphysical side of thought, Eucken 
is chiefly interested in the ethical and religious aspects of 
life’s problem. Moreover, while there is an absence of a 
distinctly teleological aim in Bergson, the purpose and ideal 


1 Die Geistigen Strémungen der Gegenwart, p. 10. 


122 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


of life are prominent elements in Eucken. Notwithstand- 
ing his antagonism to intellectualism, the influence of Hegel 
is evident in the absolutist tendency of his teaching. Life 
for Eucken is fundamentally spiritual. Self-consciousness 
is the unifying principle. Personality is the keynote of his 
philosophy. But we are not personalities to begin with : 
we have the potentiality to become such by our own effort. 
He bids us therefore forget ourselves, and strive for our 
highest ideal—the realisation of spiritual personality. ‘The 
more man ‘loses his life’ in the pursuit of the ideals of 
truth, goodness, and beauty the more surely will he ‘ save 
it.’ He realises himself as a personality, who becomes con- 
scious of his unity with the universal spiritual life. 

Hence there are two fundamental principles underlying 
Eucken’s philosophy which give to it its distinguishing 
character. The first is the metaphysical conception of a 
realm of Spirii—an independent spiritual Reality, not the 
product of the natural man, but communicating itself to 
him as he strives for, and responds to, it. This spiritual 
reality underlies and transcends the outward world. It 
may be regarded as an absolute or universal life—the 
deeper reality of which all visible things are the expression. 
The second cardinal principle is the doctrine of Activism. 
Life is action. Human duty lies in a world of strife. We 
have to contend for a spiritual life-content. Here Kucken 
has much in common with Fichte.t_ But while Fichte starts 
with self-analysis, and loses sight of error, care, and sin, 
Eucken starts with actual conflict, and ever retains a keen 
sense of these hampering elements. The evil of the world 
is not to be solved simply by looking down upon the world 
from some superior optimistic standpoint, and pronouncing 
it very good. The only way to solve it is the practical one, 
to leave the negative standing, and press on to the deeper 
affirmative—the positive truth, that beneath the world of 
nature there exists a deeper reality of spirit, of which we 
become participators by the freedom and activity of our 
lives. We are here to acquire a new spiritual world, but 


1 Cf, Problem of Life. 


VIL. ] MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 123 


it is a world in which the past is taken up and transfigured. 
Against naturalism, which acquiesces in the present order 
of the universe, and against mere intellectualism, which 
simply investigates it, Eucken never wearies of protesting. 
He demands, first, a fundamental cleavage in the inmost 
being of man, and a deliverance from the natural view of 
things ; and he contends, secondly, for a spiritual awaken- 
ing and an energetic endeavour to realise our spiritual 
resources. Not by thought but by action is the problem 
of life to be solved. Hence his philosophy is not a mere 
theory about life, but is itself a factor in the great work 
of spiritual redemption which gives to life its meaning and 
aim. 

That which makes Eucken’s positive idealism specially 
valuable is his application of it to religion. Religion has 
been in all ages the mighty uplifting power in human life. 
It stands for a negation of the finite and fleeting, and an 
affirmation of the spiritual and the eternal. This is 
specially true of the Christian religion. Christianity is the 
supreme type of religion because it best answers the ques- 
tion, ‘ What can religion do for life?’ But the old forms 
of its manifestation do not satisfy us to-day. Christianity 
of the present fails to win conviction principally for three 
reasons: (1) because it does not distinguish the eternal 
substance of religion from its temporary forms ; (2) because 
it professes to be the final expression of all truth, thus 
closing the door against progress of thought and life; and 
(3) while emphasising man’s redemption from evil, it forgets 
the elevation of his nature towards good. There is a tend- 
ency to depreciate human nature, and to overlook the 
joyousness of life. What is needed, therefore, is the expres- 
sion of Christianity in a new form—a reconstruction which 
shall emphasise the positiveness, activity, and joy of 
Christian morality. 

While every one must feel the sublimity and inspiration 
in this conception of a spiritual world, which it is the task 
of life to realise, most people will be also conscious of a 


1 Cf. Life’s Basis and Life’s Ideal. 


124 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


certain vagueness and elusiveness in its presentation. We 
are constrained to ask what is this independent spiritual 
life? Is it a personal God, or is it only an impersonal 
spirit, which pervades and interpenetrates the universe ? 
The elusive obscurity of the position and function which 
Kucken assigns to his central conception of the Geistes- 
Leben must strike every reader. Even more than Hegel, 
Eucken seems to deal with an abstraction. The spiritual 
life, we are told, ‘ grows,’ ‘ divides,’ ‘advances ’—but it 
appears to be as much a ‘bloodless category’ as the 
Hegelian ‘idea,’ having no connection with any living 
subject. God, the Spirit, may exist, indeed Eucken says 
He does, but there is nowhere any indication of how the 
spiritual life follows from, or is the creation of, the Divine 
Spirit. Our author speaks with so great appreciation of 
Christianity that it seems an ungracious thing to find fault 
with his interpretation of it. Yet with so much that is 
positive and suggestive, there are also some grave omissions. 
In a work that professes to deal with the Christian faith— 
The Truth of Religion—and which indeed presents a power- 
ful vindication of historical Christianity, we miss any philo- 
sophical interpretation of the nature and power of prayer, 
adoration, or worship, or any account, indeed, of the 
intimacies of the soul which belong to the very essence of 
the Christian faith. While he insists upon the possibility, 
nay, the necessity, of a new beginning, he fails to reveal 
the power by which the great decision is made. While 
he affirms with much enthusiasm and frankness the need of 
personal decision and surrender, he has nothing to say of 
the divine authority and power which creates our choice and 
wins our obedience. Nowhere does he show that the creative 
redemptive force comes not from man’s side, but ultimately 
from the side of God. And finally, his teaching with regard . 
to the person and work of Jesus Christ, notwithstanding 
its tender sympathy and fine discrimination, does less 
than justice to the uniqueness and historical significance 
of the Son of Man. With profound appreciation and rare 
beauty of language he depicts the life of Jesus. ‘Seldom,’ 


vil. | MODERN THEORIES OF LIFE 125 


says a recent writer, ‘has the perfect Man been limned with 
So persuasive a combination of strenuous thought and 
gracious word.’! ‘He who makes merely a normal man 
of Jesus,’ he says, ‘ can never do justice to His greatness.’ ? 
Yet while he protests rightly against emptying our Lord’s 
life of all real growth and temptation, and the claim of 
practical omniscience for His humanity (conceptions of 
Christ’s Person surely nowhere entertained by first-class 
theologians), he leaves us in no manner of doubt that he 
does not attach a divine worth to Jesus, nor regard Him in 
the scriptural sense as the Supreme revelation and incarna- 
tion of God. And hence, while the peerless position of 
Jesus as teacher and religious genius is frankly acknow- 
ledged, and His purity, power, and permanence are extolled 
—the mediatorial and redemptive implicates of His person- 
ality are overlooked. 

But when all is said, no one can study the spiritual philo- 
sophy of Eucken without realising that he is in contact with 
a mind which has a sublime and inspiring message for our 
age. Probably more than any modern thinker, Eucken 
reveals in his works deep affinities with the central spirit 
of Christianity. And perhaps his influence may be all the 
greater because he maintains an attitude of independence 
towards dogmatic and organised Christianity. Professor 
EKucken does not attempt to satisfy us with a facile optim- 
ism. Life is a conflict, a task, an adventure. And he who 
would engage in it must make the break between the higher 
and the lower nature. For Eucken, as for Dante, there 
must be ‘ the penitence, the tears, and the plunge into the 
river of Lethe before the new transcendent love begins.’ 
There is no evasion of the complexities of life. He has a 
profound perception of the contradictions of experience and 
the seeming paradoxes of religion. For him true liberty is 
only possible through the ‘given,’ through God’s pre- 
venience and grace: genuine self-realisation is only achiev- 
able through a continuous self-dedication to, and incorpora- 


1 Hermann, Bergson und Eucken, p. 103, 
2 The Problem of Life, p. 152. 


126 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


tion within, the great realm of spirits ; and the Immanence 
within our lives of the Transcendent.! 


In styling the tendencies which we have thus briefly 
reviewed non-Christian, we have had no intention of dispar- 
agement. No earnest effort to discover truth, though it may 
be inadequate and partial, is ever wholly false. In the light 
of these theories we are able to see more clearly the relation 
between the good and the useful, and to acknowledge that, 
just as in nature the laws of economy and beauty have 
many intimate correspondences, so in the spiritual realm 
the good, the beautiful, and the true may be harmonised 
in a higher category of the spirit. We shall see that the 
. Christian ideal is not so much antagonistic to, as inclusive 
of, all that is best in the teaching of science and philosophy. 
The task therefore now before us is to interpret these 
general conceptions of the highest good in the light of 
Christian Revelation—to define the chief end of life accord- 
ing to Christianity. 


1 Cf. von Hiigel, Hibbert Journal, April 1912. 


Vil. ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 127 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 


Oe highest good is not uniformly described in the New 
Testament, and modern ethical teachers have not always 
been in agreement as to the chief end of life. While some 
have found in the teaching of Jesus the idea of social 
redemption alone, and have seen in Christ nothing more 
than a political reformer, others have contended that 
the Gospel is solely a message of personal salvation. An 
impartial study shows that both views are one-sided. On 
the one hand, no conception of the life of Jesus can be more 
misleading than that which represents Him as a political 
revolutionist. But, on the other hand, it would be a dis- 
tinct narrowing of His teaching to assume that it was con- 
fined to the aspirations of the individual soul. His care 
was indeed primarily for the person. His emphasis was 
put upon the worth of the individual. And it is not too 
much to say that the uniqueness of Jesus’ teaching lay in 
the discovery of the value of the soul. There was in His 
ministry a new appreciation of the possibilities of neglected 
lives, and a hitherto unknown yearning to share their 
confidence. It would be a mistake, however, to represent 
Christ’s regard for the individual as excluding all considera- 
tion of social relations. The kingdom of God, as we shall 
see, had a social and corporate meaning for our Lord. And 
if the qualifications for its entrance were personal, its duties 
were social. The universalism of Jesus’ teaching implied 
that the soul had a value not for itself alone, but also for 
others. The assertion, therefore, that the individual has 
a value cannot mean that he has a value in isolation. 








———— 


128 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


Rather his value can only be realised in the life of the com- 
munity to which he truly belongs. The effort to help 
others is the truest way to reveal the hidden worth of one’s 
own life; and he who withholds his sympathy from the 
needy has proved himself unworthy of the kingdom. 

While the writers of the New Testament vary in their 
mode of presenting the ultimate goal of man, they are at 
one in regarding it as an exalted form of life. What they 
all seek to commend is a condition of being involving a 
gradual assimilation to, and communion with, God. The 
distinctive gift of the Gospel is the gift of life. ‘Iam the 
Life,’ says Christ. And the apostle’s confession is in har- 
mony with his Master’s claim—‘ For me to live is Christ.’ 
Salvation is nothing else than the restoration, preservation, 
and exaltation of life. 

Corresponding, therefore, to the three great conceptions 
of Life in the New Testament, and especially in the teach- 
ing of Jesus—‘ Eternal Life,’ ‘the kingdom of God,’ and 
the perfection of the divine Fatherhood, ‘ Perfect as your 
Father in heaven is perfect ’—there are three aspects, 
individual, social, and divine, in which we may view the 
Christian ideal. 


I 


Self-realisation is not, indeed, a scriptural word. But 
rightly understood it is a true element in the conception 
of life, and may, we think, be legitimately drawn from the 
ethical teaching of the New Testament.! Though the free 
full development of the individual personality as we con- 
ceive it in modern times does not receive explicit state- 


- ment,” still one cannot doubt, that before every man our 


Lord does present the vision of a possible and perfect self. 
Christianity does not destroy ‘the will to live,’ but only 
the will to live at all costs. Even medieval piety only 
inculcated self-mortification as a stage towards a higher 


1 Cf. Troeltsch, Die Sociallehren d. Christl. Kirchen, vol. i. p. 37, where 
the idea of self-worth and self-consecration is worked out. 
2 Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, vol. i. p. 76. 


VIII. J THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 129 


self-affirmation. Christ nowhere condemns the inherent 
desire for a complete life. The end, indeed, which each 
man should place before himself is self-mastery and free- 
dom from the world ;1 but it is a mastery and freedom 
which are to be gained not by asceticism but by conquest. 
Christ would awaken in every man the consciousness of the 
priceless worth of his soul, and would have him realise in 
his own person God’s idea of manhood. 

The ideal of self-realisation includes three distinct 
elements : 

/1, Infe as intensity of being—‘I am come that they 


Ynight have life, and that they might have it more abund- 
antly.’* ‘ More life and fuller’ is the passion of every soul 
that has caught the vision and heard the call of Jesus. 


The supreme good consists not in suppressed vitality, but 
in power and freedom. Life in Christ is a full, rich exist- 
ence. The doctrine of quietism and indifference to joy 
has no place in the ethic of Jesus. Life is manifested in 
inwardness of character, and not in pomp of circumstance. 
It consists not in what a man has, but in what he is.2 The 
beatitudes, as the primary qualifications for the kingdom 
of God, emphasise the fundamental principle of the sub- 
ordination of the material to the spiritual, and the contrast 
between inward_ and outward good.4 Self-mastery is to 
extend to the inner life of man—to dominate the thoughts 
and words, and the very heart from which they issue. A 
divided life is impossible. The severest discipline, even 
renunciation, may be needful to secure that singleness of 
heart and strenuousness of aim which are for Jesus the very 
essence of life. ‘Ye cannot serve God and mammon.’ > 
In harmony with this saying is the opposition in the 
Johannine teaching between ‘ the world ’ and ‘ eternal life.’ ® 
The quality of life indeed depends not upon anything con- 
tingent or accidental, but upon an intense inward _realisa- 
tion of blessedness in Christ in comparison with which even 








1 Wernle, Beginnings of Christianity, pp. 76 f. 2 John x. 10. 
3 Luke xii. 15, 16, 4 Matt. v. 
5 Matt. vi. 24. 6 1 John ii, 15, 


} 


a 


130 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


the privations and sufferings of this world are but_as_a 
shadow.! At the same time life is not a mere negation, 
not simply an escape from evil. It is a positive good, the 


enrichment_and_intensifying of the whole_being by the 
indwelling of a new spiritual power. ‘For me to live is 


Christ,’ says St. Paul. ‘ This is life eternal,’ says St. John, 
‘that they may know Thee the only true God, and Him 
whom Thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.’ 2 

2. Life as Expansion of Personality—By its inherent 
power it grows outwards as, well as inwards. The New 
Testament conception of life is existence in its fullest st expres- 
sion and fruitfulness. The ideal as presented by Christ is 
no anemic state of reverie or ascetic withdrawal from 
human interest._ It is by the elevation and consecration of 
the natural life, and not by its suppression, that the ‘good’ 
is to be realised. The natural life is to be transformed, 
and the very body presented unto God as a living 
sacrifice. So far from Christianity being opposed to 
the aim of the individual to find himself in a world of 
larger interests, it is only in the active and progressive 
realisation of such a life that blessedness consists. 
Herein is disclosed, however, the defect of the modern 
ideal of culture which has been associated with the name 
of Goethe. In Christ’s ideal self-sufficiency has no place. 
While rightly interpreted the ‘good’ of life includes 


everything that enriches existence and contributes to the 
efficiency and completeness of manhood, mere self-culture 


and artistic expression are apt to become perverted forms 
of egoism, if not subordinated to the spirit of service which 
alone can give to the human faculties their true function 
and exercise. Hence life finds its real utterance not in ies 
isolated development o of the self, but in the fullness of 

sonal relationships. Only in requchive tolite necadol iam 
can a man realise his own life. In answer to the young 
ruler who asked a question ‘ concerning that which is good,’ 
Christ replied, ‘If thou wilt enter into life keep the com- 








1 Luke x. 21; Matt. xi. 28-30; Mark viii. 35 John iii. 15, x. 28, xvii. 2. 
2 John xvii. 3. 3 Rom, Kirt 


vill. ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 131 


mandments’; and the particular duties He mentioned 
were those of the second table of the Decalogue.! The 
abundance of life which Christ offers consists in the mutual 
offices of love and the interchange of service. ‘Thus self- 
realisation is attained only ghrough self-surrender.? The 
self-centred life is a barren life. Not by withholding our 
seed but by flinging it forth freely upon the broad waters 
of humanity do we attain to that rich fruition which is 
‘life indeed.’ ) 

3. Infe as Eternal Good.—Whatever may be the accurate 
signification of the word ‘ eternal,’ the words ‘ eternal life,’ 
regarded as the ideal of man, can mean nothing else than 
life at its highest, the fulfilment of all that personality has 
within it the potency of becoming. In one sense there is 
no finality in life. ‘It seethes with the morrow for us 
more and more.’ But in another sense, to say that the 
moral life is never attained is only a half truth. Itis always 
being attained because it is always present as an active 
reality evolving its own content. In Christ we have 


‘eternal life’ now. It is not a thing of quantity but of 
quality, and is eA Ws lem WOR, 
' ©We live in deeds not years, in thoughts not breaths, 

In feelings, not in figures on a dial,’">~—— 


He who has entered into fellowship with God has within 
him RecuiscierceaneMneacal re e eternal, i 

But the conception of life derived from, and sustained by, 
God involves the idea of immortality. ‘No work begun 
shall ever pause for death.’ * To live in God is to live as 
nee Sot The spiritual man pursues his way through 
conflict and achievement towards a hi an ta higher 


goal, ever_manifesting, yet ever seeking, the infinite that 
dwells in him. All knowledge and quest and endeavour, 


nay existence itself, would be a mockery if man had ‘no 
forever.’ Scripture corroborates the yearnings of the heart 
and represents life as a growing good which is to attain to 
1 Matt. xix. 17. 2 Luke xvii. 33 ; John xii. 25, 
3 Bailey, Festus. 4 Browning. 


132 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


come. It is the unextinguishable faith of man that the 
future must crown the present. No human effort goes to 
waste, no gift is delusive; but every gift and every effort 
has its proper place as a stage in the endless process. 


‘There shall never be lost one good! What was shall live as 
before.’ 2 


It 


The foregoing discussion leads naturally to the second 
aspect of the highest Good, the Ideal in its social or corpor- 
ate form—the kingdom of God. Properly speaking, there is 
no such thing as an individual. As biologically man is 
only a member of a larger organism, so ethically he can 
only realise himself in a life of brotherhood and service. 
It is only within the kingdom of God and by recognition of 
its social relations that the individual can attain to his own 
blessedness. Viewed in the light of the mutual relation of 
its members the kingdom is a brotherhood in which none is 
ignored and all have common privileges and responsibili- 
ties ; viewed in the light of its highest good it is the entire 
perfection of the whole—a hierarchy of interests subordin- 
ated to, and unified by, the sovereignty of the good in the 
person of God. 

1. By reason of its comprehensiveness the doctrine of the 
kingdom has been regarded by many as the most general 
conception of the ideal of Jesus. ‘In its unique and un- 
approachable grandeur it dwarfs all the lesser heights to 
which the prophetic hopes had risen, and remains to this 
day the transcendent and commanding ideal of the possible 
exaltation of our humanity.’4 The principles implicitly 
contained in the teaching of Jesus concerning the kingdom 
have Become the common possessions of mankind, and are 
moulding the thoughts and institutions of the civilised 
world: Kant’s theory of a kingdom of ends, Comte’s idea 
of Humanity, and the modern conceptions of scientific and 


1 Jones, Browning as a Philosophical and Religious Teacher, p. 354. 
2 Abt Vogler. 

3 Cf. Balch, Introd. to the Study of Christian Ethics, p. 150. 

4 Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, p. 97. 











VII. J THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 133 


historical evolution are corroborative of the teaching of 
the New Testament. Within its conception men have 
found room for the modern ideas of social and economic 
order, and under its inspiration are striving for a fuller 
realisation of the aspirations and hopes of humanity. 

- Though frequently upon Elis ips thé phrase did not 
originate with Jesus. Already the Baptist had employed 
it as the note of his preaching, and even before the Baptist 
it had a long history in the annals of the Jewish people. 
Indeed the entire story of the Hebrews is coloured by this 
conception, and in the days of their decline it is the idea of 
the restoration of their nation as the true kingdom of God 
that dominates their hopes. When earthly institutions 
did not fulfil their promise, and nothing could be expected 
by natural means, hope became concentrated upon super- 
natural power. Thus before Jesus appeared there had 
grown up a mass of apocalyptic literature, the object of 
which was to encourage the national expectation of a 
sudden and supernatural coming of the kingdom of heaven. 
Men of themselves could do nothing to hasten its advent. 
They could only wait patiently till the set time was accom- 
plished, and God stretched forth His mighty hand.” 

A new school of German interpretation has recently arisen, 
the aim of which is to prove that Jesus was largely, if not 
wholly, influenced by the current apocalyptic notions of 
His time. Jesus believed, it is said, in common with the 
popular sentiment of the day, that the end of the world 
was at hand, and that at the close of the present dispensation 
there would come suddenly and miraculously a new order 
into which would be gathered the elect of God. Johannes 
Weiss, the most pronounced advocate of this view, main- 
tains that Jesus’ teaching is entirely eschatological. The 
kingdom is supramundane and still to come. Jesus did 
not inaugurate it; He only predicted its advent. Conse- 
quently there is no Ethics, strictly so called, in His preach- 


1 Balch, Introd. to the Study of Christian Ethics, p, 150. 

2 See Apocalypses of Baruch, Esdras, Enoch, and Pss. of Solomon, and 
also Daniel and Ezekiel. Cf. E. F. Scott, The Kingdom and the Messiah, for 
Apoc, literature, 


134 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (CH. 


ing; there is only an Ethic of renunciation and watchful- 
ness 1—an Interimsethik. 

The whole problem resolves itself into two crucial ques- 
tions: (1) Did Jesus expect a gradual coming of the king- 
dom, or did He conceive of it as breaking in suddenly by 
the immediate act of God? and (2) Did Jesus regard the 
kingdom as purely future, or as already begun ? 

In answer to the first question, while there are undoubt- 
edly numerous and explicit sayings, too much neglected in 
the past and not to be wholly explained by mere orientalism, 
suggesting a sudden and miraculous coming, these must be 
taken in connection with the many other passages implying 
a gradual process—passages of deep ethical import which 
seem to colour our Lord’s entire view of life and its pur- 
poses. And in answer to the second question, while there 
are not a few utterances which certainly point to a future 
consummation, these are not inconsistent with the im- 
mediate inauguration and gradual development of the 
kingdom. 

A full discussion of this subject is beyond the scope of 
this volume.? There are, however, two objections which 
may be taken to the apocalyptic interpretation of Christ’s 
teaching as a whole. (1) As presented by its most pro- 
nounced champions, this view seems to empty the person. 
and teaching of Jesus of their originality and universality. 
It tends to reduce the Son of Man to the level of a Jewish: 
rhapsodist, whose whole function was to encourage His: 
countrymen to look away rom the present scene of duty 
to some future state of felicity, which had no connection. 
with the world of reality, and no bearing upon their present: 
character. It would be surely a caricature to interpret the: 
religion of the New Testament from this standpoint alone 
to the exclusion of those direct ly ethical and spiritual prin- 

1J. Weiss, Die Predigt Jesu vom R viche Gottes. Cf. also Wernle, Die 
Anfinge unserer Religion, who is not so pronounced. Bousset rejects this 
view, and Titius, in his WV. 7. Doctrine of Blessedness, regards the kingdom of 
God as a present good. See also Moffatt, 1"he Theol. of the Gospels. ; 

2 Cf. Dobschiitz, The Eschatology of the Gospels, also Schweitzer, op. cit., 


and Sanday, The Life of Christ in Recent:: Research, EB Scott, The King dom 
of God and the Messiah, and Moffatt, op. qit. 


Vill. ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 135 


ciples in which its originality chiefly appeared, and on 
which its permanence depends.t As Bousset ? points 
out, not renunciation but joy in life is the characteristic 
thing in Jesus’ outlook.” He does not preach a gloomy =, 
asceticism, but proclaims a new righteousness and a new wy 


type of duty. He recognises the worth of the present life, 


and teaches that the world’s goods are not in themselves 
bad. He came as a living man into a dead world, and by 


inculcating a living idea of God and proclaiming the divine 
Fatherhood gave a new direction and inner elevation to 
the expectations of His age, showing the true design of 
God’s revelation and the real meaning of the prophetic 
utterances of the past. To interpret the kingdom wholly 
from an eschatological point of view would involve a failure 
to apprehend the spiritual greatness of the personality with 
which we are dealing.? (2) This view virtually makes 
Christ a false prophet. For, as a matter of fact, the sudden 
and catastrophic coming of the kingdom as predicted by 
the Hebrew apocalyptics did not take place. On the con- 
trary the kingdom of God came not as the Jews expected 
in a sudden descent from the clouds, but in the slow and 
progressive domination of God over the souls and social 
relationships of mankind. In view of the whole spirit of 
Jesus, His conception of God, and His relation to human 
life, as well as the attitude of St. Paul to the Parousia, it is 
critically unsound to deny that Jesus believed in the pres- 
ence of the kingdom in a real sense during His lifetime. 

2. If this conception of the kingdom of God be correct 
we may now proceed to regard it under three aspects, 
Present, Progressive, and Future—as a Gift immediately 
bestowed by Jesus, as a Task to be worked out by man in 
the history of the world, and as a Hope to be consummated 
by God in the future. 






1 Cf. Barbour, A Philos. Study of Chr. Ethics, p. 184. 

2 * Jesu predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum.’ 

3 Cairns, Christianity in the Mod, World, p. 173. See Schweitzer, The 
Quest of the Historical Jesus, for advocates and opponents of this view, 
pp. 222 ff. Cf. also Troeltsch, op. ctt., vol. i. p. 35. 

4 Cf. Moffatt, op. cit. 


136 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


(1) The Kingdom as a Present Reality —After what has 
been already said it will not be necessary to dwell upon 
this aspect. It might be supported by direct sayings of our 
Lord.!_ But the whole tenor and atmosphere of the Gospels, 
the uniqueness of Christ’s personality, His claim to heal 
_ disease and forgive sin, as well as the conditions of entrance, 
imply clearly that in Jesus’ own view the kingdom was an 
actual fact inaugurated by Him and obtaining its meaning 
and power from His own person and influence. Obviously 
He regarded Himself as the bearer of a new message of life, 
and the originator of a new reign of righteousness and love 
which was to have immediate application. Chri me to 
make God real to men upon the earth, and to win their 
allegiance to Him at once. No one can fail to recognise 
the lofty idealism of the Son of Man. He carries with Him 
everywhere a vision of the perfect life as it exists in the 
mind of God, and as it will be realised when these earthly 
scenes have passed away; yet it would be truer to say 
that His interests were in ‘first things’ rather than in 
‘last things,’ and would be more justly designated Protology 
than Eschatology.2, His mission, so far from having an 
iconoclastic aim, was really to ‘ make all things new.’ He 
was concerned with the initiation of a new religion, there- 
fore with a movement towards a regeneration of society 
which would be virtually a reign of God in the hearts of 
men. ‘The kingdom of God is within you.’ Not in some 
spot remote from the world, some beautiful land beyond the 
skies, but in the hearts and homes, in the daily pursuits 
and common relationships of life must God rule. The 
beatitudes, while they undoubtedly refer to a future when 
a fuller realisation of them will be enjoyed, have a present 
reference as well. They make the promise of the kingdom 
a present reality dependent upon the inner state of the 
recipients. Not in change of environment but in change 


1 Luke iv. 21, xvii. 21; Matt. xii. 28, xi, 2-8, xi. 20; Luke xyi. 16. Cf. 
also Matt. xiii. 16-17. 

2 Our Lord never uses the word ‘final’ or ‘last’ of anything concerning 
the kingdom. Onlyin the fourth Gospel do we find the phrase ‘the last day.’ 
See art., Contemporary Review, Sept. 1912. 


Vili. } THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 137 


of heart does the kingdom consist. The lowly and the 
pure in heart, the merciful and the meek, the seekers after 
righteousness and the lovers of peace are, in virtue of their 
disposition and aspiration, already members. 

(2) The kingdom as a gradual development.—The inward 
gift prescribes the outward task. It is a power command- 
ing the hearts of men and requiring for its realisation their 
response. It might be argued that this call to moral effort 
presented to the first Christians was not a summons to 
transform the present world, but to prepare themselves for 
the destiny that awaited them in the coming age.? It is 
true that watchfulness, patience, and readiness are among 
the great commands of the New Testament.? But admit- 
ting the importance of these requirements, they do not 
militate against the view that Christians were to work for 
the betterment of the world. Christ did not look upon the 
world as hopeless and beyond all power of reclaiming ; nor 
did He regard His own or His disciples’ ministry within it 
as without real and positive effects. While His contempor- 
aries were expecting some mighty intervention that would 
suddenly bring the kingdom ready-made from heaven, He 
saw it growing up silently and secretly among men. He 
took his illustrations from organic life. Its progress was 
to be like the seed hidden in the earth, and growing day and 
night by its own inherent germinating force. The object 
of the parables of the sower, the tares, the mustard seed, 
the leaven, was to show that the crude catastrophic concep- 
tion of the coming of the kingdom must give place to the 
deeper and worthier idea of growth—an idea, in harmony 
with the entire economy of God’s working in the world of 
nature. In the parable of the fruit-bearing earth Jesus 
shows His faith in the growth of the good, and hence in the 
adaptation of the truth to the human soul. In the parables 
of the leaven, the light, and salt Jesus illustrates the 
gradual power of truth to pervade, illumine, and purify 
the life of humanity. His method of bringing about this 


1 The view of Weiss. 
2 Luke xxi. 19; Matt. xxiv. 18; Mark xiii. 18; 2 Tim. ii. 12. 


138 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 
good is the contagion of the good life. His motive is the 
sense of the need of men. And His goal is the establish- 
US en taf Tae Hingdon or love a a kingdom in which all the 
problems of ambition, wealth, and the relationships of the 
family, of the industrial sphere, and of the state, are to be 


transfi ured_and spiritualised.? 

It is surely no illegitimate application of the mind of 
Christ if we see in His teaching concerning the kingdom a 
great social ideal to be realised by the personal activities 
and mutual services of its citizens. It finds its field and 
opportunity in the realm of human society, and is a good 
to be secured in the larger life of humanity. This ideal, 
though only dimly perceived by the early Church, has 
become gradually operative in the world, and has been 
creative of all the great liberating movements in history. 
It lay behind Dante’s vision of a spiritual monarchy, and 
has been the inspiring motive of those who, in obedience . 
to Christ, have wrought for the uplifting of the hapless and 
the down-trodden. It has been the soul of all mighty 
reformations, and is the source of that conception of a new 
social order which has begun to mean so much for our 
generation. 

Loyalty to the highest and love for the lowest—love to. 
God and man—these are the marks of the men of all ages 
who have sought to interpret the mind of Christ. Mutual 
service is the law of the kingdom. Every man has a worth 
for Christ, therefore reverence for the personality of man, 
and he ler endeavour to procure for each full opportunity 


of making the most of his life, are > at once the aim and goal 


of the new spiritual society of which Christ laid the founda- 


tions in His own life and ministry. Everything that a man 
is and has, talents and possessions of every kind, are to 


be used as instruments for the promotion of the kingdom 
of God. 
‘For life, with all it yields of joy and woe, 
And hope and fear... 
Is just our chance o’ the prize of learning love.’ 


1 King, The Ethics of Jesus, p. 148. 





vu] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 139 


(3) But though the reign of God has begun, it has yet to 
be consummated.—There is not wanting in the New Testa- 
ment an element of futurity and expectancy not incon- 
sistent with, but rather complementary to, the notion of 
gradual development. The eschatological teaching of 
Jesus has its place along with the ethical, and may be 
regarded not as annulling, but rather reinforcing the moral 
ideals which He proclaimed.!. There is nothing pessimistic 
in Christ’s outlook. His teaching concerning the last 
things, while inculcating solemnity and earnestness of life 
as become those to whom has been entrusted a high destiny, 
and who know not at what hour they may be called to 
give an account of their stewardship,? bids men look for- 
ward with certainty and hope to a glorious consummation 
of the kingdom. Though many of our Lord’s sayings with 
regard to His second coming are couched in figurative 
language, we cannot believe that He intended to teach that 
the kingdom itself was to be brought about in a spectacular 
or material way. He bids His disciples take heed lest they 
be deceived by a visible Christ, or led away by merely out- 
ward signs. His coming is to be as ‘ the lightning which 
cometh out of the east and shineth even unto the west ’ 4— 
an emblem not so much of suddenness as of illuminating 
and convincing, and especially, of progressive force. Not 
in a visible reign or personal return of the Son of Man does 
the consummation of the kingdom consist, but in the com- 
plete spiritual sovereignty of Christ over the hearts and 
minds of men. When the same love which He Himself 
manifested in His life becomes the feature of His disciples ; 
when His spirit of service and sacrifice pervades the world, 
and the brotherhood of man and the federation of nations 
_ everywhere prevail ; then, indeed, shall the sign of the Son 
of Man appear in the heavens, and then shall the tribes of 


1 Mark xiii, 7-31 has been called the ‘little Apocalypse’ and the hypothesis 
has been thrown out that a number of verses (fifteen in all) form a document 
by themselves, ‘a fly leaf’ put into circulation before the fall of Jerusalem, 
and really incorporated by the Evangelist himself. See Sanday, art., Hib- 
bert Journal, Oct. 1911, and Life of Christ in Recent Research. 

2 Matt. xxiv. 42, 3 Matt. xxiv. 23, 4 Matt. xxiv. 27. 


\ 


mag 


140 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


the earth see Him coming in the clouds with power and 
glory.} 

Jesus does not hesitate to say that there will be a final 
judgment and an ingathering of the elect from all quarters 
of the earth.2, There will be, as the parable of the Ten 
Virgins suggests, a division and a shut door. But punish- 
ment will be automatic. Sin will bring its own conse- 
quences. Those only will be excluded at the last who even 


now are excluding themselves. For Christ is already here, 


and is j cpa tar pucainIa ne oA By the common actions | 
of their present life men are being tried ; and that which 
will determine their final relation to Christ will not be their 


mere perception of His bodily presence, but their moral 
and spiritual] likeness to Him. 


- Amidst the imperfections of the present men have ever 


looked forward to some glorious consummation, and have 
lived and worked in the faith of it. ‘To the prophets of 
Israel it was the new age of righteousness; to the Greek 
thinkers the world of pure intelligible forms ; to Augustine 
and Dante the holy theocratic state; to the practical 
thought of our own time the renovated social order. Each 
successive age will frame its own vision of the great fulfil- 
ment; but all the different ideals can find their place in the 
message of the kingdom which was proclaimed by Jesus.’ # 

There is thus opened to our vision a splendid conception 
of the future of humanity. It stands for all that is highest 
in our expectations because it is already expressive of all 
that is best in our present achievements and endeavours. 
The final hope of mankind requires for its fulfilment a pro- 
gressive moral discipline. Only as Christ’s twofold com- 
mand—love to God and love to man—is made the all- 
pervasive rule of men’s lives will the goal of a universally 
perfected humanity be attained. 


1 Matt. xxiv. 30. 2 Matt. xxiv. 31. 3 Matt. xxv. 
4K. F. Scott, The Kingdom and ihe Messiah, p. 256. 


VIII. ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 14] 


IIt 


The chief good may be regarded finally in its divine 
_ aspect—as the endeavour after God-likeness. / In this third 
form of the ideal the two others—the personal and the 
social—are harmonised and completed. To realise the 
perfect life as it is revealed in the character and will of God 
is the supreme aim of man, and it embraces all that is con- 
ceivably highest for the individual and for humanity as a 
whole. This aspiration finds its most explicit expression 
in the sublime word of Christ—‘ Be ye perfect even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect.’ This commandment, unlike 
so many generalisations of duty, is no cold abstraction. It 
is pervaded with the warmth of personality and the inspira- 
tion of love. In the idea of Fatherhood both a standard 
and motive are implied. Because God is our Father it is 
at once natural and possible for us to be like Him. He 
who would imitate another must have already within him 
something of that other. As there is a community of 
nature which makes it possible for the child to grow into 
the likeness of its parent, so there is a kinship in man with 
God to which our Lord here appeals. 

1, Among the ethical qualities of divine perfection set 
forth in scripture for man’s imitation Holiness stands pre- 


eminent. God, the perfect being, is the type of holine 8, 
and m ly in proportion are Go e. 


This conception of holiness is fundamental in the Old 
Testament. It is summed up in a command almost 
identical with that of our Lord: ‘ Be ye holy, for I am 
holy.’? Holiness, as Christianity understands it, is the name 
for the undimmed lustre of God’s ethical perfection. God 
is ‘ the Holy one ’—the alone ‘ good’ in the absolute sense.® 

If God’s character consists in ‘ Holiness,’ then that qual- 
ity determines the moral end of man. But holiness, as the 
most comprehensive name for the divine moral perfection— 
the pure white light of God’s Being—breaks up into the 


1 Matt. v. 48. 2 Lev. iv. 11, xix. 2. 3 Mark x. 18. 


142 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (cH. 


separate rays which we designate the special moral attri- 
butes. These have been grouped under ‘ Righteousness ’ 
(truth, faithfulness, justice, zeal, etc.), and ‘ Love’ (good- 
ness, pity, mercy, etc.), though they are really but expres- 
sions of one individual life.t 

2. In the New Testament Righteousness is almost equiva- 
lent to holiness. It is the attribute of God which deter- 
mines the nature of His kingdom and the condition of man’s 
entrance into it. As comprising obedience to the will of 
God and the fulfilment of the moral law, it is the basal and 
central conception of the Christian ideal.2 It is the keynote 
of the Pauline Epistles. Life has a supreme sacredness for 
Paul because the righteousness of God is its end. While 
righteousness is the distinctive note of the Pauline concep- 
tion, it is also fundamental in the Ethics of Jesus. It is 
the ruling thought in the Sermon on the Mount. To be 
righteous for Jesus simply means to be right and true—to 
be as one ought to be. But human standards are insuffi- 
cient. A man must order his life by the divine standard. 
Jesus is as emphatic as any Old Testament prophet in 
insisting upon the need of absolute righteousness. That, 
for all who would share in the kingdom of the good, is to be 
their ideal—the object of their hunger and thirst. It isa 
‘good’ which is essential to the very satisfaction and 
blessedness of the soul. It is the supreme desire of the 
man who would be at peace with God. It involves poverty 
of spirit, for only those who are emptied of self are conscious 
of their need. They who, in humility and meekness, 
acknowledge their sins, are in the way of holiness and are 
already partakers of the divine nature. 

Christ’s teaching in regard to righteousness has both a 
negative and a positive aspect. It was inevitable that He 
should begin with a criticism of the morality inculcated by 
the leaders of His day. The characteristic feature of 
Pharisaism was, as Christ shows, its externalism. If a man 
fulfilled the outward requirements of the law he was re- 


1 Cf. Orr, Sin as a Problem of To-day, chap. iii. 
2 Cf. Jacoby, Neu-testamentliche Ethik, p. 1. 3 Matt. v. 3 f. 


VII. } THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 143 


garded as holy, by himself and others, whatever might be 
the state of his heart towards God. This outwardness 
tended to create certain vices of character. Foremost 
amongst these were (1) Vanity or Ostentation. To appear 
well in the opinion of others was the aim of pharisaic con- 
duct. Along with ostentation appears (2) Self-complacency. 
Flattery leads to self-esteem. He who loves the praise of 
man naturally begins to praise himself. As a result of self- 
esteem arises (3) Censoriousness, since he who thinks well 
of himself is apt to think ill of others. As a system 
Pharisaism was wanton hypocrisy—a character of seeming 
righteousness, but too often of real viciousness. 

But Christ came not to destroy but to fulfil the law. 
His aim was to proclaim the true principles of righteousness 
in contrast to the current notions of it. This He proceeds 
to do by issuing the law in its ideal and perfected form.? 
Hence Jesus unfolds its positive content by bringing into 
prominence the virtues of the godly character as opposed 
to the pharisaic vices. Modesty and humility are set over 
against ostentation and self-righteousness.? Single-minded 
sincerity is commended in opposition to hypocrisy.4 The 
vice of censoriousness is met by the duty of self-judgment 
rather than the judgment of others.5 

The two positive features of the new law of righteousness 
as expounded by Jesus are—inwardness and spontaneity. 
The righteousness of the Gospel, so far from being laxer or 
easier of fulfilment, was actually to exceed that of the 
Pharisees: ® (a) in depth and inwardness. It is not enough 
not to kill or steal or commit adultery. These command- 
ments may be outwardly kept yet inwardly broken. Some- 
thing more radical is expected of the man who has set before 
him the doing of God’s will, a righteousness not of appear- 
ance but of reality. (6) In freedom and spontaneity. It is 
to have its spring in the heart. It is to be a righteousness 
not of servile obedience, but of willing devotion. The aim 
of life is no longer the painful effort of the bondsman who 


1 Matt. v. 17. 2 Matt. v. 18. 3 Matt. vi. 1-6, 
4 Matt. vi. 16-18. 5 Matt. vii, 1-5. 6 Matt. vy. 20, 


144 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


strives to perform a distasteful task, but the gladsome 
endeavour of the son who knows and does, because he loves, 
his father’s will. In the Ethics of the Christian life there 
is no such thing as mere duty; for a man never fulfils his 
duty till he has done more than is legally required of him. 
‘Whosoever shall compel you to go with him one mile, go 
with him twain.’! The ‘nicely calculated less or more’ is 
alien to the spirit of him who would do God’s will. Love 
is the fulfilling of the law, and love knows nothing of limits. 

3. Thus the holiness of God is manifested not in right- 
eousness only, but in the attribute of Love. The human 
mind can attain to no higher conception of the divine 
character than that which the word ‘love’ suggests. The 
thought is the creation of Christianity. It was the special 
contribution of one of the innermost circle of Jesus’ 
disciples to give utterance to the new vision of the divine 
nature which Christ had disclosed—‘ God is love.’? In 
our Lord’s teaching the centre of gravity is entirely changed. 
The Jewish idea of God is enriched with a fuller content. 
He is still the Holy One, but the sublimity of His righteous- 
ness, though fully recognised, is softened by the gentler 
radiance of love. Jehovah the Sovereign is revealed as 
God the Father. Divine righteousness is not simply 
justice, but goodness manifested in far-reaching activities 
of mercy and pity and benevolence. A new note is struck 
in the Ethics of Jesus. A new relationship is established 
between God and man—a personal filial relationship which 
entirely alters man’s conception of life. To be perfect as~ 
our Father in heaven is perfect, to be, and embody in life 
all that love means, that is the sublime aim which Jesus in 
His own person and teaching sets before the world. As 
God’s love is universal, and His care and compassion world- 
wide, so, says Christ, not by retaliation or even by the per- 
formance of strict justice, but in loving your enemies, in 
returning good for evil and extending your acts of help- 
fulness and charity to those ‘ who know not, care not, think 


1 Matt. v. 41. 2 1 John iv. 8, 16. 
8 John xvii. 11; Heb. x. 31; Rev. xv. 4. 


vit. ] THE CHRISTIAN IDEAL 145 


not, what they do,’ shall ye become the children of Jour 
Father, and realise something of that divine pattern of 
every man which has been shown him on the holy mount. 


If the view presented in this chapter of the ethical ideal 
of Christianity be correct, then the doctrine of an Interims- 
ethik advocated by modern eschatologists must be pro- 
nounced unsatisfactory as a complete account of the teach- 
ing of Jesus.1. The three features which stand out most 
clearly in the Ethics of Christ are, Absoluteness, Inwardness, 
and Universality. It is an ideal for man as man, for all 
time, and for all men. The personality of God represents 
the highest form of existence we know; andthe love-ef— 
ieee subllicaeee atteibtite’ Wwe can conceive But 
because God is ouf Father theré is a kinship between the 
divine and the human; and no higher or grander vision 
of life is thinkable than to be like God—to share that which 
is most distinctive of the divine Fatherhood—His love of 
all mankind. Hence Godlikeness involves Brotherhood.? 
In the ideal of love—high as God, broad as the world—the 
other aspects of the chief good, the individual and the social, 
are harmonised. In Christian Ethics, the problem of philo- 
sophy how to unite the one and the many, egoism and 
altruism, has been practically solved. The individual 
realises his life only as he finds himself in others ; and this 
he can only do as he finds himself in God. The first and 
last word of all morality and religion is summed up in 
Christ’s twofold law of love: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with 
all thy mind; and thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- 
self.’ 8 

1 Cf. E. Digges La Touche, The Person of Christ in Modern Thought, 


pp. 150 ff. 
21 John iv. 21. 8 Matt. xxii. 37. 


146 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


CHAPTER IX 
THE STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE 


In every system of Ethics the three ideas of End, Norm, \. 
and Motive are inseparable. Christian Ethics is unique in 
this respect that it presents not merely a code of morals, 
but an ideal of good embodied in a person who is at once 
the pattern and inspiration of the new life. In this chapter 
we propose to consider these two elements of the good. 


I 


Christ as Example.—The value of ‘ concrete examples’ 
has been frequently recognised in non-Christian systems. 
In the ‘ philosopher king’ of Plato, the ‘expert’ of Aris- 
totle, and the ‘ wise man’ of the Stoics we have the imagin- 
ary embodiment of the ideal. A similar tendency is appar- 
ent in modern theories. Comte invests the abstract idea 
of ‘Humanity’ with certain personal perfections for which 
heclaims homage. But what other systems have conceived 
in an imaginative form only, Christianity has realised in an 
actual person. 

The example of Christ is not a separate source of author- 
ity independent of His teaching, but rather its witness and 
illustration. Word and deed in Jesus are in full agreement. 
He was what He taught, and every truth He uttered flowed 
directly from His inner nature. He is the prototype and 
expression of the ‘ good’ as it exists in the mind of God, as 
well as the perfect representative and standard of it in 
human life. In Him is manifested for all time what is 
meant by the good. 


1x.] STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE 147 


1. If Christ is the normative standard of life it is ex- 
tremely important to obtain a true perception of Him as 
He dwelt among men. But too often have theology and 
art presented a Christ embellished with fantastic colours or 
obscured by abstract speculations. Recently, however, 
there has been a revival of interest in the actual life of 
Jesus. Men are turning wistfully to the life of the Master 
for guidance in practical matters, and it is beginning to 
dawn upon the world that the highest ideals of manhood 
were present in the Carpenter of Nazareth. We must 
therefore go back to the Gospels if we would know what 
manner of man Jesus was. The difficulty of presenting 
the Man Christ Jesus as the eternal example to the world 
must have been almost insurmountable; and we are at 
once struck with two remarkable features of the synoptics’ 
portrayal of Him. (1) The writers make no attempt to 
produce a work of art. They never dream that they are 
drawing a model for all men to copy. There is no effort to 
touch up or tone down the portrait. They simply reflect 
what they see without admixture of colours of their own. 
Hence the paradox of His personality—the intense human- 
ness and yet the mystery of godliness ever and anon shining 
through the commonest incidents of His life, (2) Even 
more remarkable than the absence of subjectivity on the 
part of the evangelists is the unconsciousness of Jesus that 
He is being portrayed as an example. We do not receive 
the impression that the Son of Man was consciously living 
for the edification of the world. His mental attitude is 
not that of an actor playing a part, but of a true and genuine 
man living his own life and fulfilling his own purpose. 
There is no seeming or display. Goodness to be effectual 
as an example must be unconscious goodness. We are 
impressed everywhere with the perfect naturalness and 
spontaneity of all that Christ did and uttered.1 

The character of Jesus has been variously interpreted, 
and it is one of the evidences of His moral greatness that 
each age has emphasised some new aspect of His person- 


1 Cf, Fairbairn, The Phil. of the Ch. Religion, pp. 358 ff. 


148 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


ality. In a nature so rich and complex it is difficult to fix 
upon a single category from which may be deduced the 
manifold attributes of His character. Two conceptions of 
Jesus have generally prevailed down the centuries. One 
view interprets His character in terms of asceticism; the 
other in terms of estheticism.1 Some regard Him as the 
representative of Hebrew sorrow and sacrifice ; others see 
in Him the type of Hellenic joy and geniality. There are 
passages in Scripture confirmatory of both impressions. 
On the one hand, there is a whole series of virtues of the 
passive order which are utterly alien to the Greek ideal ; 
and, on the other hand, there is equally prominent a tone 
of tranquil gladness, of broad sympathy with, and keen 
appreciation of, the beautiful in nature and life which 
contrasts with the spirit of Hebrew abnegation. But, after 
all, neither of these traits reveals the secret of Jesus. Joy 
and sorrow are but incidents in life. They have only moral 
value as the vehicles of a profounder spiritual purpose. To 
help every man to realise the fullness and perfection of his 
being as a child of God is the aim of His life and ministry, 
and everything that furthers this end is gratefully recog- 
nised by Him asa good. He neither courts nor shuns pain. 
Neither joy nor sorrow is for Him an end in itself. Both 
are but incidents upon the way of holiness and love which 
He had chosen to travel. 

2. Everywhere there was manifest in the life and teach- 
ing of Jesus a note of self-mastery and authority which im- 
pressed His contemporaries and goes far to explain and unify 
the various features of His personality and influence. It 
is remarkable to notice how often the word ‘ power’ is 
applied to Jesus in the New Testament.2 Whether we 
regard His attitude to God, or His relation to others, it is 
this note of quiet strength, of vital moral force which 
arrests our attention. It will be sufficient to mention in 
passing three directions in which this quality of power is 
manifest. 


1 Peabody, Christ and the Christian Character, p. 44. 
2 Peabody, op. cit., pp. 53 f. 


Ix.]} STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE 149 


(1) Itis revealed in the consciousness of a divine mission. 
He goes steadily forward with the calmness of one who 
knows himself and his work. He has no fear or hesitancy. 
Courage, earnestness, and singleness of purpose mark His 
career. He is conscious that His task has been given Him 
by God, and that He is the chosen instrument of His 
Father’s will. Life has a greatness and worth for Him 
because it may be made the manifestation and vehicle of 
the divine purpose. 

(2) His power is revealed again in the realisation of Holt- 
ness. Holiness is to be differentiated, on the one hand, 
from innocence; and, on the other, from sinlessness. 
Innocence is untried goodness; sinlessness is negative 
goodness; holiness is achieved and victorious goodness. 
It was not mere absence of sin that distinguished Jesus. 
His was a purity won by temptation, an obedience per- 
fected through suffering, a peace and harmony of soul 
attained not by self-suppression, but by the consecration 
of His unfolding life to the will of God. 

(3) His power is manifested once more in His Sympathy 
with man. His purity was pervasive. It flowed forth in 
acts of love. He went about doing good, invading the world 
of darkness and sorrow with light and joy. Itis the wealth 
of His interests and the variety of His sympathy which 
give to the ministry of the Son of Man its impressiveness 
and charm. With gladness as with grief, with the playful- 
ness of childhood and the earnestness of maturity, with the 
innocent festivities and the graver pursuits of His fellow- 
men, with the cares of the rich and the trials of the poor, 
He disclosed the most intimate and tender feeling. His 
parables show that He had an open and observant eye for 
all the life around Him. To every appeal He responded 
with an insight and delicacy of consideration which be- 
tokened that He Himself had sounded the depths of human 
experience and knew what was in man. Humour, irony, 
and pathos in turn are revealed in His human intercourse. 

But while Jesus delighted to give of Himself freely He 
knew also how to withhold Himself. There can be no true 


150 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


sympathy without restraint. The passive virtues—meek- 
ness, patience, forbearance—which appear in the life of 
Christ are ‘not the signs of mere self-mortification, they 
are the signs of power in reserve. They are the marks of 
one who can afford to wait, who expects to suffer ; and that 
not because he is simply meek and lowly, but because he is 
also strong and calm.’ } 

The New Testament depicts Jesus as made in the likeness 
of men, whose life, though unique in some of its aspects, 
was in its general conditions normal, passing through the 
ordinary stages of growth, and participating in the common 
experiences of mankind. He had to submit to the same 
laws and limitations of the universe as we have. There 
was the same call, in His case as in ours, to obedience and 
~ endurance. There was the same demand for moral decision. 
Temptation, suffering, and toil, which mean so much for 
man in the discipline of character, were factors also in the 
spiritual development of Christ. Trust, prayer, thanks- 
giving were exercised by the Son of Man as by others ; con- 
fession alone had no place in His life. 

3. The question has been seriously asked, Can the 
example and teaching of Jesus be really adopted in modern 
life as the pattern and rule of conduct? Is there not 
something strangely impracticable in His Ethics; and, 
however admirably suited to meet the needs of His own 
time, utterly inapplicable to the complex conditions of 
society to-day ? On the one hand, Tolstoy would have us 
follow the example of Jesus to the letter, and rigidly 
practise the precepts of the Sermon on the Mount, even to 
the extent of refusing to resist wrong and possess property, 
and of holding aloof from all culture and enterprise, and 
the interests of life generally. On the other hand, philo- 
sophers like Paulsen and Bradley, perceiving the utter 
impracticableness of Tolstoy’s contentions, yet at the same 
time recognising his attitude as the only consistent one 
if the imitation of Christ is to have vogue at all, are con- 
vinced that the earthly life of Jesus is not the model of our 


1 Peabody, op. cit., p. 68. 


ix.} STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE 151 


age, and that to attempt to carry out His precepts con- 
sistently would be not only impossible but injurious to all 
the higher interests of humanity. 

But this conclusion is based, it seems to us, upon a two- 
fold misapprehension. It is founded upon an inadequate 
interpretation of the life and teaching of Christ; and also 
upon a wholly mechanical understanding of the meaning 
and value of example. 

(1) What was Christ’s ideal of the Christian life? Was 
it that of the monk or the citizen ?—the recluse who medi- 
tates apart on his own salvation, or the worker who enters 
the world and contributes to the betterment of mankind ? 
Is the kingdom of God a realm apart and separate from all 
the other domains of activity ? Or has Christianity, ac- 
cording to its essence, room within it for an application of 
its truth to the complex relations and manifold interests of 
modern life? Both views have found expression in the 
history of the Church. But there can be little doubt as to 
which is the true interpretation of the mind of Jesus.” 

(2) But, again, what is meant by the ‘imitation of Christ’ 
has been also misconceived. Imitation is not a literal 
mechanical copying. To make the character of another 
your model does not mean that you are to become his mimic 
orecho. In asking us to follow Him, Christ does not desire 
to suppress our individuality, but to enrich and ennoble it. 
When He says, on the occasion of the feet-washing of His 
disciples, ‘I have given you an example, that ye should 
do as I have done to you,’ obviously it was not the out- 
ward literal performance, but the spirit of humility and 
service embodied in the act which He desired His disciples 
to emulate. From another soul we receive incentives rather 
than rules. No teacher or master, says Hmerson, can 


1 See Paulsen, System der Ethik, pp. 56 ff.; also Troeltsch, op. cit., vol. ii. 


. 847... 
* 2 Cf. Ehrhardt, Der Grundcharacter d. Ethik. Jesu, p. 110. ‘The ascetic 
element in the ethics of Jesus is its transient, the service of God its permanent 
element.’ Cf. also Strauss, Leben Jesu, who speaks of ‘the Hellenic 
quality’ in Jesus; also Keim, Jesus of Nazareth, and Troeltsch, op. cit., 
vol. i. pp. 34 ff. 
3 John xiii. 15. 


152 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


realise for us what is good.! Within our own souls alone 
can the decision be made. We cannot hope to interpret 
the character of another until there be within our own 
breasts the same moral spirit from which we believe his 
conduct to proceed. The very nature of goodness forbids 
slavish reproduction. Hence there is a certain sense in 
which the paradox of Kant is true, that ‘ imitation finds no 
place at all in morality.’ The question, ‘What would 
Jesus do ?’ as a test of conduct covers a quite inadequate 
“conception of the intimate and vital relations Christ bears 
to our humanity. ‘It is not to copy after Christ,’ says a 
modern writer, ‘but to receive His spirit and make it 
effective—which is the moral task of the Christian.’ 
Christ is indeed our example, but He is more. And unless 
He were more He could not be so much. We could not 
strive to be like Him if He were not already within us, the 
Principle and Spirit of our life, the higher and diviner self 
of every man. 

What is meant, then, by saying that Christ is the ideal 
character or norm of life is that He represents to us human 
nature in its typical or ideal form. As we behold His per- 
fection we feel that this is what we were made for, this is 
the true end of our being. Every one may, in short, see in 
Him the fulfilment of the divine idea and purpose of man— 
the conception and end of himself. 


II 


The Christian Motive.—Rightly regarded Christ is not 
only the model of the new life, but its motive as well. All 
the great appeals of the Gospel—every persuasion and plea 
by which God seeks to awaken a responsive love in the 
hearts of men—are centred in, and find expression through, 
the Person and Passion of Christ. 

___\. The question of motive is a primary one in Ethics. 


1 Conduct of Life. 2 Metaphysics of Ethics, sect. ii. 
3 Schultz, Grundriss d. ewang. Ethik, p. 5. 
4 Cf. Ecce Homo, chap. x. 


ix.] STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE = 153 


If, therefore, we ask, What is the deepest spring of action, 
what is the incentive and motive power for the Christian ? 
The answer is: (1) the love of God, a love which finds its 
highest expression in Forgiveness. Of all motives the most 
powerful is the sense of being pardoned. Even when it is 
only one human being who forgives another, nothing strikes 
so deep into the human heart or evokes penitence so tender 
and unreserved, or brings a joy so pure and lasting. It 
not only restores the old relation which wrong had dis- 
solved ; it gives the offender a sense of loyalty unknown 
before. He is now bound not by law but by honour, and 
it would be a disloyalty worse than the original offence if 
he wounded such love again. Thus itis that God becomes 
the object of reverence and affection, not because He 
imposes laws upon us but because He pardons and redeems. 
The consciousness of forgiveness is far more potent in 
producing goodness than the consciousness of law. This 
psychological fact lay at the root of Christ’s ministry, and 
was the secret of His hope for man. ‘This, too, is the key 
to all that is paradoxical, and, at the same time, to all that 
is most characteristic in St Paul’s Gospel. What the Law 
could not do, forgiveness achieves. It creates the new 
heart, and with it the new holiness. ‘It is not anything 
statutory which makes saints out of sinful men; it is the 
forgiveness which comes through the passion of Jesus.’ ! 
(2) Next to the motive of forgiveness, and indeed arising 
from it, is the new consciousness of the Fatherhood of God, 
and the corresponding idea of sonship. This was a motive 
to which Jesus habitually appealed. He invariably sought 
not only to create in men confidence in God by revealing 
His fatherly providence, but also to lift them out of their 
apathy and thraldom by kindling in their souls a sense of 
their worth and liberty as sons of God. The same thought 
is prominent also in the epistles both of St. Paul and St. 
John. As children of God we are no longer menials and 
hirelings who do their work merely for pay, and without 


1 This thought has been beautifully worked out by Prof, Denney in British 
Weekly, Jan. 13, 1912. 


154 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


intelligent interest, but sons who share our Father’s pos- 
sessions and co-operate with Him in His purposes.! 

(3) Closely connected with the idea of Sonship is that of 
life as a Divine Vocation. Life is a trust, and as the chil- 
dren of God we are called to serve Him with all we have 
and are. The sense of the vocation and stewardship of life 
acts as a motive: (a) in giving dignity and stability to char- 
acter, saving us, on the one hand, from fatalism, and on the 
other from fanaticism, and affording definiteness of purpose 
to all our endeavours ; and (6) in promoting sincerity and 
fidelity in our life-work. 'Thoroughness will permeate every 
department of our conduct, since whatsoever we do in 
word or deed we do as unto God. All duty is felt to be one, 
and as love to God becomes its motive the smallest as well 
as the greatest act is invested with infinite worth. ‘ All 
service ranks the same with God.’ 

(4) Another motive, prominent in the Pauline Epistles, 
but present also in the eschatological passages of the 
Synoptics, ought to be mentioned, though it does not now 
act upon Christians in the same form—the Shortness and 
Uncertainty of life. Our Lord enjoins men to work while it 
is day for the night cometh ; and in view of the suddenness 
and unexpectedness of the coming of the Son of Man He 
exhorts to watchfulness and preparedness. A _ similar 
thought forms the background of the apostle’s conception 
of life. His entire view of duty as well as his estimate of 
earthly things are tinged with the idea that ‘the time is 
short,’ and that ‘the Lord is at hand.’ Christians are 
exhorted, therefore, to sit lightly to all worldly considera- 
tions. Our true citizenship is in heaven. But neither the 
apostle nor his Master ever urges this fact as a reason for 
apathy or indifference. Life may be brief, but it is not 
worthless. The thought of life’s brevity must not act as 
an opiate, but rather as a stimulant. If our existence here 
is short, then there is all the greater necessity that its days 
should be nobly filled, and its transient opportunities seized 
and turned into occasions of strenuous service. 


1 Luke xv, 


ix.} STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE = 155 


(5) To the considerations just mentioned must be added 
a cognate truth which has coloured the whole Christian 
view of life, and has been a most powerful factor in shaping 
Christian conduct—the idea of Immortality. It is not quite 
correct to say that we owe this doctrine to Christianity 
alone. Long before the Christian era it was recognised in 
Egypt, Greece, and the Orient generally. But it was enter- 
tained more as a surmise than a conviction. And among 
the Greeks it was little more than the shadowy speculation 
of philosophers. Plato, in his Phedo, puts into the mouth 
of Socrates utterances of great beauty and far-reaching 
import ; yet, notwithstanding their sublimity, they scarcely 
attain to more than a ‘ perhaps.’ Even in Hebrew litera- 
ture, as we have seen, while isolated instances of a larger 
hope are not wanting, there is no confident or general belief 
in an after-life. But what was only guessed at by the > 
ancients was declared as a fact by Christ, and preached as 
a sublime and comforting truth by the apostles; and it 
is not too much to say that survival after death is at once 
the most distinctive doctrine of Christianity and the most 
precious hope of Christendom. The whole moral tempera- 
ture of the world, says Jean Paul Richter, has been raised 
immeasurably by the fact that Christ by His Gospel has 
brought life and immortality to light. This idea, which 
has found expression, not only in all the creeds of Christen- 
dom, but also in the higher literature and poetry of modern 
times, has given a new motive to action, has founded a new 
type of heroism, and nerved common men and women to 
the discharge of tasks from which nature recoils. The 
assurance that death does not end existence, but that ‘man 
has forever,’ has not only exalted and transfigured the 
common virtues of humanity; but, held in conjunction 
with the belief in the divine Fatherhood and human brother- 
hood, given to life itself a new solemnity and pathos.} 

2. But if these are the things which actuate men in their 
service of God and man, can it be legitimately said that the 
Christian motive is pure and disinterested ? It is some- 


1 Cf, Knight, The Christian Hihic, p. 36. 


156 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


what remarkable that two opposite charges have been 
brought against Christian Ethics.1 In one quarter the 
reproach has been made that Christianity suppresses every 
natural desire for happiness, and inculcates a life of severe 
renunciation. And with equally strong insistence there are 
others who find fault with it because of its hedonism, 
because it rests morality upon an appeal to selfish interests 
alone. 

(1) The first charge is sufficiently met, we think, by our 
view of the Christian ideal. We have seen that it is a full 
rich life which Christ reveals and commends. The kingdom 
of God finds its realisation, not in a withdrawal from human 
interests, but in a larger and fuller participation in all that 
makes for the highest good of humanity. Itis a caricature 
of Christ’s whole outlook upon existence to represent Him 
as teaching that this life is an outlying waste, forsaken of 
God and unblessed, and that the world is so hopelessly 
bad that it must be wholly renounced. On the contrary, 
it is for Him one of the provinces of the divine kingdom, 
and the most trivial of our occupations and the most 
transient of our joys and sorrows find their place in the 
divine order. It is not necessary to endorse Renan’s 
idyllic picture of the Galilean ministry to believe that for 
Jesus all life, its ordinary engagements and activities, had 
a worth for the discipline and perfecting of character, and 
were capable of being consecrated to the highest ends. 
There are, indeed, not a few passages in which the call to 
self-denial is emphasised. But neither Christ nor His 
apostles represent pain and want as in themselves effica- 
cious or meritorious. Renunciation is inculcated not for 
its own sake, but always as a means to fuller realisation. 
Jesus, indeed, transcends the common antithesis of life. 
For Him it is not a question as to whether asceticism or non- 
asceticism is best. Life is for use. It is at once a trust and 
a privilege. It may seem to some that He chose ‘the 
primrose path,’ but if he did so it was not due to an easy- 
going good-nature. We dare not forget the terrible issues 


1 See Haering, Hthics of the Christian Life, p. 190. 


ix.) STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE 157 


He faced without flinching. As Professor Sanday has 
finely said, ‘ If we are to draw a lesson in this respect from 
our Lord’s life, it certainly would not be that 


“He who lets his feelings run 
In soft luxurious flow, 
Shrinks when hard service must be done, 
And faints at every woe.” 


It would be rather that the brightest and tenderest human 
life must have a stern background, must carry with it the 
possibility of infinite sacrifice, of bearing the cross and the 
crown of thorns.’ } 

(2) The second charge, the charge of hedonism, though 
seemingly opposed to the first, comes into line with it in so 


far as it is alleged that Christianity, while inculcating > 


renunciation in this world, does so for the sake of happiness 
in the next. It is contended that in regard to purity of 
motive the Ethics of Christianity falls below the Ethics of 
philosophy.? This statement, so often repeated, requires 
some examination. 


disinterestedness are the criterion of moral sublimity, it 
must be noted at the outset that considerable confusion 
of thought exists as to the meaning of motive. Even 
in those moral systems in which virtue is represented 
as wholly disinterested, the motive may be said to reside 
in the object itself. The maxim, ‘ Virtue for virtue’s sake,’ 
really implies what may be called the ‘ interest of achieve- 
ment.’ If virtue has any meaning it must be regarded as 
a ‘good’ which is desirable. Perseverance in the pursuit 
of any good implies the hope of success; in other words, 
of the reward which lies in the attainment of the object 
desired. The reward sought may not be foreign to the 
nature of virtue itself, but none the less, the idea of reward 
is present, and, in a sense, is the incentive to all virtuous 
endeavour. ‘This is, indeed, implied by a no less rigorous 
1 ‘Apocalyptic Element in the Gospels,’ Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1911. 


2 The question of rewards has been fully discussed by Jacoby, Neu- 
testamentliche Ethik, pp. 41 ff. ; also Barbour, op. cit., pp. 226 ff. 


samen 


3. While it may be acknowledged that unselfishness and ~ 


—_ 


158 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


moralist than Kant. For as he himself teaches, the ques- 
tion, ‘ What should I do ?’ leads inevitably to the further 
question, ‘What may I hope?’! The end striven after 
cannot be a matter of indifference, if virtue is to have 
moral value at all. It must be a real and desirable end— 
an end which fulfils the purpose of a man as a moral being. 

(1) But though Kant insists with rigorous logic that rever- 
ence for the majesty of the moral law must be the only 
motive of duty, and that all motives springing from per- 
sonal desire or hope of happiness must be severely excluded, 
it is curious to find that in the second part of his Critique of 
Practical Reason he proceeds, with a strange inconsistency, 
to make room for the other idea, viz., that virtue is not 
without its reward, and is indeed united in the end with- 
happiness. Felicity and holiness shall be ultimately one, 
he says ; and, at the last, virtue shall be seen ‘ to be worthy 
of happiness,’ and happiness shall be the crown of goodness.? 
Thus those philosophers, of whom Kant is typical, who 
contend for the purity of the moral motive and the dis- 
interested loyalty to the good, bring in, at the end, the 
notion of happiness, which, as a concomitant or conse- 
quence of virtue, cannot fail to be also an active incentive. 

(2) When we turn to Christian Ethics we find that here, 
not less than in philosophical Ethics, the motive lies in the 
object itself. The end and the motive are really one, and 
the highest good is to be sought for itself and not for the 
sake of some ulterior gain. It is true, indeed, that Chris- 
tianity has not always been presented in its purest form ; 
too often have prudence, fear, other-worldliness been set 
forth as inducements to goodness, as if the Gospel cared 
nothing for the disposition of a man, and was concerned 
only with his ultimate happiness. Even a moralist so 
acute as Paley bases morality upon no higher ground than 
enlightened self-interest. But the most superficial reader 
of the Gospels must see at a glance the wide variance 
between such a view and that of Christ. Nothing could 
be further from the spirit of Jesus than to estimate the 


1 Cf. Kritik d. prakt. Vernunft, p. 148. 2 Kant, Idem. 


ix.} STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE = 159 


excellence of an action by the magnitude or the utility of 
its effects rather than the intrinsic good of its motive. 
Otherwise He would not have ranked the widow’s mite 
above the gifts of vanity, nor esteemed the tribute of the 
penitent, not so much for the costliness of her offering, as 
for the sincerity of affection it revealed. Christ looked 
upon the heart alone, and the worth of an action lay essen- 
tially for Him in its inner quality. Sin resided not merely 
in the overt act, but even more in the secret desire. A man 
may be outwardly blameless, and yet not really good. He 
who remains sober or honest simply because of the worldly 
advantages attaching to such conduct may obtain a certifi- 
cate of respectability from society; but, judged by the 
standard of Christ, he is not truly a moral man. In an age 
which is too prone to make outward propriety the gauge of 
goodness, it cannot be sufficiently insisted upon that the 
Ethic of Christianity is an Ethic of the inner motive and 
intention, and that, in this respect, it does not fall a whit 
behind the demand of the most rigid system of disinter- 
ested morality. 

(a) It must, however, be freely admitted that our Lord 
frequently employs the sanctions both of rewards and 
penalties. In the time of Christ the idea of reward, so 
prominent in the Old Testament, still held an important 
place in Jewish religion, being specially connected with the 
Messianic Hope and the coming of the kingdom. It was 
not unnatural, therefore, that Jesus, trained in Hebrew 
religious modes of thought and expression, should frequently 
employ the existing conceptions as vehicles of His own 
teaching ; but, at the same time, purifying them of their 
more materialistic associations and giving to them a richer 
spiritual content. While the kingdom of God is spoken 
of as a gift, and promised, indeed, as a reward, the word 
‘reward’ in this connection is not used in the ordinary 
sense, but ‘is rather conceived as belonging to the same 
order of spiritual experience as the state of heart and mind 
which ensures its bestowal.’1 Though Jesus does not 


1 Barbour, op. cit., p. 231. 


160 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


hesitate to point His disciples to the blessings of heaven 
which they will receive in the future, these are represented 
for the most part not as material benefits, but as the 
intensification and enrichment of life itself. 

It was usually the difficulties rather than the advantages 
of discipleship upon which Jesus first laid stress. He 
would not that any one should come to Him on false pre- 
tences, or without fully counting the cost.2, Even when He 
Himself called His original disciples, it was of service and 
not of recompense He spoke. ‘Follow Me, and I will make 
you fishers of men.’? The privilege consisted not in out- 
ward éclat, but in the participation of the Master’s own 
purpose and work. Still, all service carries with it its own 
reward, and no one can share the mission of Christ without 
also partaking of that satisfaction and joy which are in- 
separable from the highest forms of spiritual ministry. 

There is, however, one passage recorded by all the 
Synoptists which seems at first sight to point more de- 
finitely to a reward of a distinctly material character, and 
to one that was to be enjoyed not merely in the future, 
but even in this present life. When Peter somewhat boast- 
fully spoke of the sacrifice which he and his brethren had 
made for the Gospel’s sake, and asked, ‘ What shall we 
have therefor ?’ Jesus replied, ‘Verily, I say unto you, that 
noman that hath left home, or brethren, or sisters, or mother, 
or father, or children, or lands, for My sake and the Gospel’s 
sake, but shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, 
houses and brethren, sisters and mothers, and children and 
lands, with persecutions ; and in the world to come eternal 
life.’ 5 Now, while this is a promise of wide sweep and 
large generosity, it is neither so arbitrary nor material as 
it seems. First, the words, ‘ with persecutions,’ indicate 
that suffering is not only the very condition of the promise, 
but indeed an essential part of the reward—an element which 
would of itself be a true test of the sincerity of the sacrifice. 


1 Matt. v. 12, xix. 21, xxv. 34; Luke vi. 23, xviii. 22; Mark x. 21. 

2 Mark viii. 19; Luke ix. 57. 

3 Mark i. 17, ii. 14. 4 Luke xxii. 29 f. 
5 Mark x. 28-31; cf. Matt. xix. 27-30. 


1x.] STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE 161 


But, second, even the promise, ‘ An hundredfold now in 
this time,’ is obviously not intended to be taken in a literal 
sense, but rather as suggesting that the gain, while appar- 
ently of the same nature as the sacrifice, will have a larger 
spiritual import. For, just as Jesus Himself looked upon 
all who shared His own devotion as His mother and breth- 
ren; so, in the deepest sense, when a man leaves father and 
mother, renouncing home and family ties for the sake of 
bringing his fellow-men to God, he seems to be emptying 
his life of all affectionate relationships, but in reality he is 
entering into a wider brotherhood ; and, in virtue of his 
ministry of love, is being knit in bonds stronger than those 
of earthly kinship, with a great and increasing community 
of souls which owe to him their lives.1_ The promise is no 
arbitrary gift or bribe capriciously bestowed; it is the 
natural fruition of moral endeavour. For there is nothing 
so productive as sacrifice. What the man who yields him- 
self to the service of Christ actually gives is life; and what 
he gets back, increased an hundredfold, is just life again, 
his own life, repeated and reflected in the men and women 
whom he has won to Christ. 

In some of His parables Christ employs the analogy of 
the work-engagement, in which labour and payment seem 
to correspond. But the legal element has a very subordin- 
ate place in the simile. Jesus lifts the whole relationship 
into a higher region of thought, and transforms the idea of 
wages into that of a gift of love far transcending the legal 
claim which can be made by the worker. He who has the 
bondsman’s mind, and works only for the hireling’s pay, will 
only get what he works for. But he who serves from love 
finds in the service itself that which must always be its 
truest recompense—the increased power of service, the 
capacity of larger devotion ?—‘ The wages of going on.’ % 
In his latest volume Deissmann has pointed out that we 
can only do justice to the utterances of the New Testament 
regarding work and wages by examining them in situ, 


1 This thought is finely elaborated by Barbour. 
2 Matt. xxv. 21; Luke xix. 17. 3 Tennyson, Wages 


162 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. - 


amidst their natural surroundings. Jesus and St. Paul 
spoke with distinct reference to the life and habits of the 
common people of their day. ‘If you elevate such utter- 
ances to the level of the Kantian moral philosophy, and 
reproach primitive Christianity with teaching for the sake 
of reward, you not only misunderstand the words, but tear 
them up by the roots.’ . . . “The sordid ignoble suggestions 
so liable to arise in the lower classes are altogether absent 
from the sayings of Jesus and His apostles, as shown by the 
parable of the Labourers in the Vineyard, and the analogous 
reliance of St. Paul solely upon grace.’ 4 

The same inner relation subsists between Sin and Penalty. 
But here, again, the award of punishment is not arbitrary, 
but the natural consequence of disobedience to the law 
of the spiritual life. He who seeks to save his life shall 
lose it. He who makes this world his all shall receive as 
his reward only what this world can give. He who buries 
his talent shall, by the natural law of disuse, forfeit it. 
Not to believe in Christ is to miss eternal life. To refuse 
Him who is the Light of the world is to remain in darkness. 

(6) An examination of the Pauline epistles yields a similar 
conclusion. St. Paul does not disdain to employ the sanc- 
tions of hope and fear. ‘ Knowing the terrors of the Lord’ 
he persuades men, and ‘ because of the promises’ he urges 
the Corinthians ‘ to cleanse themselves and perfect holiness.’ 
But in Paul’s case, as in that of our Lord, the charge of 
hedonism is meaningless. For not only does the conception 
hold a most subordinate place in his teaching, but the idea 
loses the sense of merit, and is transmuted into that of a free 
gift. And in general, in all the passages where the hope of 
the future is introduced, the idea of reward is merged in 
the yearning for a fuller life, which the Christian, who has 
once tasted of its joy here, may well expect in richer 
measure hereafter.” 

Enough has been said to clear Christianity of the 
charge of hedonism. So far from Christian Ethics falling 


1 Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East, pp. 316 ff. 
4 See also Eph, vi. 5-8; 1 Cor. iii. 14; Rom. v, 2-5, vi. 23, viii. 16. 


1x.} STANDARD AND MOTIVE OF THE NEW LIFE = 163 


below Philosophical Ethics in regard to purity of motive, 
it really surpasses it in the sublimity of its sanctions. The 
KXantian idea of virtue tends to empty the obligation of all 
moral content. Goodness, as the philosopher himself came 
to see, cannot be represented as a mere impersonal abstrac- 
tion. Virtue has no meaning except in relation to its ulti- 
mate end. And life in union with a personal God, in whose 
image we have been made, is the end and purpose of man’s 
being. Noble as it may be to live morally without the 
thought of God, the man who so strives to live does not 
attain to such a high conception of life as he who lives with 
God for his object. Motives advance with aims, and the 
higher the ideal the nobler the incentive. Fear of future 
punishment and the desire for future happiness may prove 
effective aids to the will at certain stages of moral develop- 
ment, but ultimately the love of God and the beauty of 
holiness make every other motive superfluous. Indeed, the 
reward of the Christian life is such as can only appeal to 
one who has come to identify himself with the divine will. 
The Christian man is always entering upon his reward. 
His joy is his Master’s joy. He has no other interest. His 
reward, both here and hereafter, is not some external pay- 
ment, something separable from himself ; it is wholly con- 
ditioned by what he is, and is simply his own growth of 
character, his increasing power of being good and doing 
good. And if it be still asked, What is the great induce- 
ment ? What is it that makes the life of the Christian 
worth living ? The answer can only be—The hope of becom- 
ing what Christ has set before man as desirable, of growing 
up to the stature of perfect manhood, of attaining to the 
likeness of Jesus Christ Himself. But so far from this being 
a selfish aim, not to seek one’s life in God—to be indifferent 
to all the inherent blessings and joys involved—would be 
not the mark of pure disinterestedness, but the evidence, 
rather, of a lack of appreciation of what life really means. 
The soul that has caught the vision of God and been thrilled 
with the grace of the Son of Man cannot but yield itself to 
the best it knows, 


164 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (cH. 


CHAPTER X 
THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 


In the dynamic power of the new life we reach the central 
and distinguishing feature of Christian Ethics. ‘The unique- 
ness of Christianity consists in its mode of dealing with a 
problem which all non-Christian systems have tended to 
ignore—the problem of translating the ideal into life. The 
Gospel not only sets before men the highest good, but it 
imparts the secret of realising it. The ideals of the ancients 
were but visions of perfection. They had no objective 
reality. Beautiful as these old-time visions of ‘Good’ 
.were, they lacked impelling force, the power to change 
dreams into realities. ‘They were helpless in the face of 
the great fact of sin. They could suggest no remedy for 
moral disease. 

Christianity is not a philosophical dream nor the imagina- 
tion of a few visionaries. It claims to be a new creative 
force, a power communicated and received, to be worked 
out and realised in the actual life and character of common 
men and women. 

In this chapter we have to consider the means whereby 
man is brought into a new spiritual relation with God, 
and enabled to live the new life as it has been revealed in 
Christ. This reconciliation implies a twofold movement 
—a redemptive action on God’s part, and an appropriating 
and determinative response on the part of man. 


I 
THE DIVINE POWER 


The urgent problem of the New Testament writers was, 
How can man achieve that good which has been embodied 


x.] THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 165 


in the life and example of Jesus Christ ? A full answer to 
this question would lead us into the realm of dogmatic 
theology. And therefore, without entering upon details, 
it may be said at once that the originality of the Gospel lies 
in this, that it not only reveals the good in a concrete and 
living form, but discloses the power which makes the good 
possible in the hitherto unattempted derivation of the new 
life from a new birth under the influence of the spirit of 
God. The power to achieve the moral life does not lie in 
the natural man. No readjustment of circumstances, nor 
spread of knowledge, is of itself equal to the task of creating 
that entirely new phenomenon—the Christian character. 
There must be a cause proportionate to the effect. ‘ No- 
thing availeth,’ says Paul, ‘ but a new creature.’ This new 
condition owes its origin to God. Itis a life communicated 
by an act of divine creative activity. 

But while this regenerative energy is represented gener- 
ally as the work of God’s spirit, it is more particularly set 
forth as operating through Christ who is the power of God 
unto salvation. 

There are three great facts in Christ’s life with which the 
New Testament connects the redemptive work of God. 

1. The Incarnation.—In Christ God shares man’s nature, 
and thus makes possible a union of the divine and human. 
On its divine side the incarnation is the complete revelation 
of God in human life, and on the human side it is the 
supreme expression of the spiritual meaning of human 
nature itself. Christ saves not by a special act of atone- 
ment alone, but emphatically by manifesting in Himself 
the union of God and man. In view of the fact of the 
world’s sin, the Incarnation, as the revelation of the divine 
life, includes a gracious purpose. It involves the sacrifice of 
God, which theologians designate by the theory of Kenosis. 
The Advent was not only the consummation of the re- 
ligious history of the race; it was also the inauguration 
of a new era. The Son of Man initiated a new type of 
humanity, to be realised in increasing fullness as men 
entered into the meaning of the great revelation, ‘He 


166 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


recapitulated in Himself the long unfolding of mankind.’ } 
Hence in the very fact of the word becoming flesh atone- 
ment is involved. In Christ God is revealed in the reality 
of His love and the persistence of His search for man, while 
man is disclosed in the greatness of his vision and vocation. 

2. The Death of Christ—Although already implied in the 
life, the atonement culminates in the death of Christ. 
Even by being made in the likeness of men Jesus did not 
escape from, but willingly took up, the burdens of humanity 
and bore them as the Son of Man. But His passion upon 
the cross, as the supreme instance of suffering borne for 
others, at once illuminated and completed all that He 
suffered and achieved as man’s representative. It is this 
aspect of Christ’s redemptive work upon which St. Paul 
delights to dwell. And though naturally not so prominent 
in our Lord’s own teaching, yet even there the significance 
of the Redeemer’s death is foreshadowed, and in more than 
one passage explicitly stated.2, Here we are in the region 
of dogmatics, and we are not called upon to formulate a 
doctrine of the atonement. All that we have to do with is 
the ethical fact that between man and the new life there 
lies the actuality of sin, the real source of man’s failure to 
achieve righteousness, and the stumbling-block which must 
be removed before reconciliation with God the Father can 
be effected. The act, at once divine and human, which 
alone meets the case is represented in Scripture as the 
Sacrifice of Christ. In reference to the efficacy of the sacri- 
fice upon the cross Bishop Butler says: * How and in what 
particular way it had this efficacy, there are not wanting 
persons who have endeavoured to explain; but I do not 
find that the Scripture has explained it.’ Though, indeed, 
the fact is independent of any theory, the truth for which 
the cross stands must be brought by us into some kind of 
intelligible relation with our view of the world, otherwise 
it is a piece of magic lying outside of our experience, and 


1 Trenexus, Contra Haereses, It. xviii. 1. 
2 Matt. xx. 28; John xi. 51; Matt. xxvi. 28; Mark xiv. 8, 9. 
3 The Andlogy, part 11. chap. v. 


x.] THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 167 


having no ethical value for life. At the same time no 
doctrine has suffered more from shallow theorisings, and 
particularly by the employment of mechanical, legal, and 
commercial analogies, than the doctrine of the atonement. 
The very essence of the religious life is incompatible with the 
idea of an external transference of goodness from one being 
to another. Man can be reconciled to God only by an 
absolute surrender of himself to God. To assimilate this 
spiritual act toa commercial or legal transaction is to destroy 
the very idea of the moral life. No explanation, however, 
can be considered satisfactory which does not safeguard 
two ideas of a deeply ethical nature—the voluntariness and 
the vicariousness of Christ’s sacrifice. We must be careful 
to do justice, on the one hand, to the eternal relations in 
which Christ stands to God; and on the other, to the 
intimate association with man into which Jesus has entered. 
It is the task of theology to bring together the various 
passages of Scripture, and exhibit their systematic connec- 
tion and relative value for a doctrine of soteriology. For 
Ethics the one significant fact to be recognised is that in a 
human life was fulfilled perfect obedience, even as far as 
death, a perfect obedience that completely met and fully 
satisfied the demand of the very highest, the divine ideal. 
3. The Resurrection of Christ.—lf the Incarnation natu- 
rally issues in the sacrifice unto death, that again is crowned 
and sealed by Christ’s risen life. The Resurrection is the 
vindication and completion of the Redeemer’s work. He 
who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh 
was declared to be the Son of God by the Resurrection. It 
was the certainty that He had risen that gave to His death, 
in the apostles’ eyes, its sacrificial value. This was the 
ground of St. Paul’s conviction that the old order had 
passed away, and that a new order had been established. 
‘Tf Christ be not risen ye are yet in your sins.’ In virtue 
of His ascended life Christ becomes the indwelling presence 
and living power within the regenerate man. It is in no 
external way that the Redeemer exerts His influence. He 
is the principle of life working within the soul. The key 


168 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


to the new state is to be found in the mystical union of the 
Christian with the risen Lord. The twofold act of death 
and resurrection has its analogy in the experience of every 
redeemed man. Within the secret sanctuary of the human 
soul that has passed from death to life, the history of the 
Redeemer is re-enacted. In the several passages which 
refer to this subject the idea is that tha changed life is 
based upon an ethical dying and rising again with Christ.? 
The Christ within the heart is the vital principle and 
dynamic energy by which the believer lives and triumphs 
over every obstacle—the world, sin, sorrow, and death itself. 
‘IL live, yet not I, but Christ livethin me.’? All that makes 
life, ‘life indeed ’—an exalted, harmonious, and joyous exist- 
ence—is derived from union with the living Lord, who has 
come to be what He is for man by the earthly experiences 
through which He has passed. Thus by His Incarnation, 
Death, and Resurrection He is at once the source and goal, 
the spring and ideal of the new life. 


‘Yea, thro’ life, death, sorrow, and through sinning, 
He shall suffice me for He hath sufficed ; 
Christ is the end, for Christ was the beginning : 
Christ the beginning, for the end is Christ.’ ° 


Theology may seek to analyse the personality of Christ 
into its elements—the incarnation, death, and resurrection 
of Jesus. But after all it is one and indivisible. It is 
the whole fact of Christ, and not any particular experience 
taken in its isolation, which is the power of God unto sal- 
vation. The question still remains after all our analysis, 
What was it that gave to these events in the history of 
Jesus their creative and transforming power? And the 
answer can only be—Because Christ was what He was. It 
was the unique character of the Being of whom these were 
but the manifestations which wrought the spell. What 
bound the New Testament Christians to the cross was that 
their Master hung there. They saw in that life lived among 


12 Cor. v. 14 f.; Rom. vi. ; Moher. iii. 16, 17, v 
2 Gal. ii. 20, 3 Meyers, Saint Paul 


oy THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 169 


men, and in that sacrifice upon Calvary, the perfect con- 
summation of the ideal manhood that lived within their 
own hearts, and of the love, new upon the earth, which 
made it possible. The cross stood for the symbol of a 
truth that pierced to the inner core of their souls. ‘ He 
bore our sins.’ And thus down the centuries, in their hour 
of shame, and grief, and death, men have lifted their eyes 
to the Man of Sorrows, and have found in His life and sacri- 
fice, apart from all theories of atonement, their peace and 
triumph. It is this note of absolute surrender towards 
God and of perfect love for man which, because it answers 
to a deep yearning of the human heart, has given to the 
mystery of the Incarnation and the Cross its lifting and 
renewing power. 


Ir 
THe Human RESPONSE 


Possession of power involves the obligation to use it. 
The force is given ; it has to be appropriated. The spirit of 
Christ is not offered in order to free a man from the duties 
of the moral life. Man is not simply the recipient of divine 
energy. He has to make it his own and to work it out by 
his self-determinative activity. Nevertheless the relation 
of the divine spirit to the human personality is a subject 
of great perplexity, involving the psychological problem of 
the connection of the divine and the human in life generally. 
If in the last resort God is the ultimate source of all life, 
the absolute Being, who 


‘Can rejoice in naught 
Save only in Himself and what Himself hath wrought’ ; 


that truth must be held in harmony with the facts of divine 
immanence and human experience. The divine spirit holds 
within His grasp all reality, and by His self-communicating 
activity makes the world of nature and of life possible. But 
that being granted, how are we to conceive the relation 
of that Spirit to man with his distinct individuality, with 


170 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


his sense of working out a future and a fate in which the 
Absolute may indeed be fulfilling its purpose, but which 
are none the less man’s own achievement ? That is the 
crux of the problem. The outstanding fact which bears upon 
this problem is the general character of our experience, the 
growth of which is not the mere laying of additional mater- 
ial upon a passive subject by an external power, but is a 
true development, a process in which the subject is himself 
operative in the unfolding of his own potentialities. _With- 
out dwelling further upon this question it may be well to 
bear in mind two points: (1) The growth of experience is 
a gradual entrance into conscious possession of what we im- 
plicitly are and potentially have from the beginning. Duty, 
for example, is not something alien from a man, something 
superimposed by a power not himself. It lies implicit in 
his nature as his ideal and vocation. The moral life is the 
life in which a man comes to ‘ know himself,’ to apprehend 
himself as he truly is. (2) In this development of exper- 
ience we ourselves are active and self-organising. We are 
really making ourselves, and are conscious, that even while 
we are the instruments of a higher power, we are working 
out our own individuality, exercising our own freedom and 
determination.t The teaching of the New Testament is in 
full accord with this position. If, on the one hand, St. 
Paul states that every moral impulse is due to the inspira- 
tion of God, no less emphatic is he in ascribing to man 
himself full freedom of action. ‘The ethical sense of re- 
sponsibility,’ says Johannes Weiss,? ‘the energy for struggle, 
and the discipline of the will were not paralysed nor absorbed 
in Paul’s case by his consciousness of redemption and his 
profound spiritual experiences.’ Scripture lends no sup- 
port to the idea which some forms of Augustinian theology 
assume, that the divine spirit is an irresistible force acting 
from without upon man and superseding his exertions. It 
acts as an immanent moral power, not compelling or crush- 
ing the will, but quickening and inspiring its efforts. 


1 See Blewett, The Christian View of the World, pp. 88 ff., where this 
subject is suggestively treated. 2 Christ and Paul. 


x.] THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 171 


If we inquire what constitutes the subjective or human 
element in the making of the new life, we find that the New 
Testament emphasises three main factors--Repentance, 
Faith, and Obedience. These are complementary, and to- 
gether constitute what is commonly called ‘ conversion.’ 

1. Repentance is a turning away in sorrow and contrition 
from a life of sin, a breaking off from evil because a better 
standard has been accepted. Our Lord began His ministry 
with a call to repentance. The first four beatitudes set 
forth its elements; while the parable of the prodigal 
illustrates its nature. 

Ethical writers distinguish between a negative and a 
positive aspect of repentance. On its negative side it is 
regarded as the emotion of sorrow excited by reflection 
upon sin. But sorrow, though accompanying repentance, 
must not be identified with it. Mere regret, either in the 
form of bitterness over one’s folly, or chagrin on account 
of discovery, may be but a weak sentiment which exerts 
little or no influence upon a man’s subsequent conduct. 
Even remorse following the commission of wickedness may 
only deepen into a paralysing despair which works death 
rather than repentance unto life. 

(1) On its positive side repentance implies action as well 
as feeling, and involves a determination of will to quit the 
past and start on a new life. A man repents not merely 
when he grieves over his misdeed, but when he confesses it 
and seeks to make what amendment he can. This positive 
outlook upon the future, rather than the passive brooding 
over the past, is happily expressed in the New Testament 
term perdvo.a, change of mind, and is enforced in the 
Baptist’s counsel, ‘ Bring forth fruits meet for repentance.’ } 
The change of mind here indicated is practically equivalent 
to what is variously called in the New Testament ‘ Con- 
version, 2 ‘ Renewal,’ ? ‘ Regeneration,’ 4—words sugges- 
tive of the completeness of the change. 

(2) The variety of terms employed to describe conversion 


1 Matt. iii. 8; Luke iii. 8. 2 Acts xxvi. 20. 
3 Rom. xii. 12; Titus iii. 5. 4 2 Cor, v. 17; Gal. vi. 15. 


172 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (cH. 


would seem to imply that the Scriptures recognise a diver- 
sity of mode. All do not enter the kingdom of God by the 
same way ; and the New Testament offers examples varying 
from the sudden conversion of a Saul to the almost imper- 
ceptible transformation of a Nathaniel and a Timothy. In 
modern life something of the same variety of Christian 
experience is manifest. While what is called ‘sudden 
conversion’ cannot reasonably be denied,! as little can 
those cases be ignored in which the truth seems to pervade 
the mind gradually and almost unconsciously—cases of 
steady spiritual growth from childhood upwards, in which 
the believer is unaware of any break in the continuity of 
his inner history, his days appearing to be ‘ bound each to 
each by natural piety.’ 

(3) The question arises, Which is the normal experience ? 
The matter has been put somewhat bluntly by the late 
Professor James,? as to whether the ‘ twice-born’ or the 
‘once-born’ present the natural type of Christian exper- 
ience. Is it true, he asks, that the experience of St. Paul, 
which has so long dominated Christian teaching, is really 
the higher or even the healthier mode of approaching 
religion ? Does not the example of Jesus offer a simpler 
and more natural ideal ? The moral experience of the Son 
of Man was not a revolution but an evolution. His own 
religion was not that of the twice-born, and all that He 
asked of His disciples was the childlike mind.* Paul, the 
man of cities, feels a kindred turbulence within himself. 
Jesus, the interpreter of nature, feels the steady persuasive- 
ness of the sunshine of God, and grows from childhood in 
stature, wisdom, and favour with God and man. It is con- 
tended by some that the whole Pauline conception of sin 
is a nightmare, and rests upon ideas of God and man which 
are unworthy and untrue. ‘As a matter of fact,’ says Sir 
Oliver Lodge, ‘the higher man of to-day is not worrying 
about his sins at all, still less about their punishment ; his 
mission, if he is good for anything, is to be up and doing.’ 4 


1 See Begbie, Broken Harthenware. 2 Varieties of Relig. Experience. 
Mark x. 15. 4 Man and the Universe, p. 220. 


x.] THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 173 


This amounts to a claim for the superiority of the first of 
the two types of religious consciousness, the type which 
James describes as ‘ sky-blue souls whose affinities are with 
flowers and birds and all enchanting innocencies than with 
dark human passions; ... in whom religious gladness, 
being in possession from the outset, needs no deliverance 
from any antecedent burden.’! ‘The second type is marked 
by a consciousness, similar to St. Paul’s, of the divided self. 
It starts from radical pessimism. It only attains to re- 
ligious peace through great tribulation. It is the religion 
of the ‘sick soul’ as contrasted with that of ‘ healthy- 
mindedness.’ But, morbid as it may appear, to be disturbed 
by past sin, it is really the ‘ twice-born ’ who have sounded 
the depths of the human heart, and have been the greatest 
religious leaders. And so far from the sense of the need of 
repentance being the sign of a diseased mind, the decreasing 
consciousness of sin in our day may only prove the shallow- 
ness of the modern mind. What men need of religion is 
power. And there is a danger of people to-day losing a 
sense of the dynamic force of the older Gospel.” 

But whether Paul’s case is abnormal or the reverse, it is 
surely a false inference that, because Christ grew up with- 
out the need of conversion, His life affords in this respect 
a pattern to sinful men. It is just His perfect union 
with God which differentiates Him entirely from ordinary 
men ; and that which may be necessary for sinful creatures 
is unthinkable in His case. What He was we are to 
become. But before we can follow Him, there is for us, 
because of sin, a preliminary step—a breaking with our 
evil past. And in all His teaching our Lord clearly recog- 
nises this. His first call is a call to repentance. It is 
indeed the childlike mind He requires; but He significantly 
says that ‘except ye turn and become as little children, ye 
shall in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven.’ ® 

The decision of will demanded of Jesus, while it may not 


1 Varieties of Religious Experience, p. 80. 
2 Cf. Foundations : a Statement of Religious Belief by seven Oxford men, 
Essay VI., pp. 274 f. 3 Matt. xviii, 3. 


174 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


necessarily involve a catastrophe of life or convulsion of 
nature, must be none the less a deliberate and decisive 
turning from evil to good. By what road a man must 
travel before he enters the kingdom, through what con- 
vulsion of spirit he must pass, so frequently dwelt upon by 
St. Paul and illustrated by his own life, Christ does not say. 
In the Fourth Gospel there is one reported saying describing 
a process of spiritual agony, like that of physical child-birth, 
indicative that the change must be radical, and that at 
some point of experience the great decision must be made, 
a decision which is likely to involve deep travail of soul. 

There are many ways in which a man may become a 
Christian. Some men have to undergo, like Paul, fierce 
inward conflict. Others glide quietly, almost impercept- 
ibly, into richer and ampler regions of life. But when or 
how the transition is made, whether the renewal be sudden 
or gradual, it is the same victory in all cases that must be 
won, the victory of the spirit over the flesh, the * putting 
off of the old man’ and the ‘ putting on of the new.’ Life 
cannot be always a compromise. Sooner or later it must 
become an alternative. He who has seen the higher self 
can be no longer content with the lower. The acts of con- 
trition, confession, and decision—essential and successive 
steps in repentance—are the immediate effects of the vision 
of Christ. Though repentance is indeed a human activity, 
here, as always, the earlier impulse comes from the divine 
side. He who truly repents is already in the grip of Christ. 
‘We love Him because He first loved us.’ 

2. Faith.—lIf repentance looks back and forsakes the old, 
faith looks forward and accepts the new. Even in repent- 
ance there is already an element of faith, for a man cannot 
turn away from his evil past without having some sense of 
contrast between the actual and the possible, some vision 
of the better life which he feels to be desirable. 

(1) While there is no more characteristic word in the New 
Testament than faith, there is none which is used in a 
greater variety of senses, or whose import it is more diffi- 
cult to determine. It must not be forgotten at the outset 


x.] THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 175 


that though it is usually regarded as a theological term, it is 
a purely human act, and represents an element in ordinary 
life without which the world could not hold together for a 
single day. We constantly live by faith, and in our 
common intercourse with our fellows we daily exercise this 
function. We have an irresistible conviction that we live 
in a rational world in which effect answers to cause. Faith, 
it has been said, is the capital of all reasoning. Break 
down this principle, and logic itself would be bankrupt. 
Those who have denied the intelligibility of the universe 
have not been able to dispense with the very organ by which 
their argument is conducted. Hence faith in its religious 
sense is of the same kind as faith in common life. It is 
distinguishable only by its special object and its moral 
intensity. 

(2) The habitual relationship between Christ and His 
disciples: was one of mutual confidence. While Jesus 
evidently trusts them, they regard Him as their Master on 
whose word they wholly rely. Ever invested with a deep 
mystery and awe, He is always for His disciples the embodi- 
ment of all that is highest and holiest, the supreme object 
of reverence, the ultimate source of authority. Peter but 
expresses the mind of the company when he says, ‘ To 
whom can we go but unto Thee, Thou hast the words of 
eternal life.’ Nor was it only the disciples who manifested 
this personal trust. Many others, the Syrophenician 
woman, the Roman Centurion, Zacchzeus, Bartimzeus, also 
evinced it. It was, indeed, to this element in the human 
heart that Jesus invariably appealed ; and while He was 
quick to detect its presence, He was equally sensitive to its 
absence. Even among the twelve, when, in the face of 
some new emergency, there was evidence of mistrust, He 
exclaimed, ‘O ye of little faith. And when, beyond His 
own immediate circle, He met with suspicion and unbelief, 
it caused Him surprise and pain.} 

From these and other incidents it is obvious that faith 
for Jesus had a variety of meanings and degrees. 


1 Matt. xiii. 58; Mark vi. 5, 


176 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


(a) Sometimes it meant simply trust in divine providence ; 
as when He bids His disciples take no thought for their 
lives, because He who feeds the ravens and clothes the 
lilies cares for them. (6) It meant again belief in His own 
divine power; as when He assures the recipients of His 
healing virtue that their faith hath made them whole. 
(c) It is regarded by Jesus as a condition of forgiveness and 
salvation. Thus to the woman who had sinned He said, 
‘Thy faith hath saved thee,’ and to the man who was 
sick of the palsy, ‘Son, thy sins be forgiven thee.’ 4 

The essential and vital mark in all Christ’s references 
is the personal appropriation of the good which He Him- 
self had brought to man. In His various modes of activity 
—in His discourses, His works of healing and forgiveness— 
it is not too much to say that Jesus regarded Himself as 
the embodiment of God’s message to the world; and to 
welcome His word with confidence and joy, and unhesi- 
tatingly act upon it, was faith. Hence it did not mean 
merely the mental acceptance of some abstract truth, but, 
before all else, personal and intimate devotion to Himself. 
It seems the more necessary to emphasise this point since 
Harnack has affirmed ‘that, while Christ was the special 
object of faith for Paul and the other apostles, He did not 
enter as an element into His own preaching, and did not 
solicit faith towards Himself.’? It is indeed true that 
Jesus frequently associated Himself with His Father, whose 
immediate representative He claims to be. But no one 
can doubt that He also asserts authority and power on His 
own account, and solicits faith on His own behalf. Nor 
does He take pains, even when challenged, to explain that 
He was but the agent of another. On the contrary, as we 
have seen, He acts in His own right, and pronounces the 
blessings of healing and forgiveness in His own name. 
Even when the word ‘ Faith’ is not mentioned the whole 
attitude and spirit of Jesus impels us to the same con- 
clusion. There was an air of independence and authority 


1 Cf. Stalker, The Hthic of Jesus, p. 179. 
2 Das Wesen des Christenthums, p. 91, quoted by Stalker, idem, p. 176. 


x] THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 177 


about Him which filled His disciples and others, not merely 
with confidence, but with wonder and awe. His repeated 
word is, ‘I say unto you.’ And there is a class of sayings 
which clearly indicate the supreme significance which He 
attached to His own personality as an object of faith. 
Foremost among these is the great invitation, ‘Come unto 
Me, all ye that labour and are heavy-laden, and I will give 
you rest.’ 

(3) If we turn to the epistles, and especially to the 
Pauline, we are struck by the apparently changed meaning 
of faith. It has become more complex and technical. It 
is no longer simply the receptive relation of the soul 
towards Christ; it is also a justifying principle. Faith 
not only unites the believer to Christ, it also translates 
him into a new sphere and creates for him a new environ- 
ment. The past is cancelled. All things have become 
new. The man of faith has passed out of the dominion of 
law into the kingdom of Grace. 

The Pauline doctrine of Justification by Faith has re- 
ceived in the history of the Church a twofold interpretation. 
On the one hand, it has been maintained that the sole 
significance of faith is that it gives to the believer power, 
by God’s supernatural aid, to realise a goodness of which 
he is naturally incapable. On the other hand, it is held 
that the peculiarity of faith is that, though he himself is a 
sinner deserving condemnation, it affords to the believer an 
assurance of the favour with which a loving Father regards 
him, not on account of his own attainments, but in virtue 
of the perfect obedience of the Son of God with whom each 
is united by faith. The former is the more distinctively 
Roman view; the latter that of the Reformed Church. 
While the Catholic form of the doctrine gives to ‘ works’ 
a place not less important than faith in justification, the 
Protestant exalts ‘faith’ to the position of priority as 
more in harmony with the mystery of the atoning sacrifice 
of Christ as expounded by St. Paul. Faith justifies, be- 
cause it is for the Christian the vision of an ideal. What we 
admire in another is already implicitly within us. We 


178 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


already possess the righteousness we believe in. The moral 
beauty of Christ is ours inasmuch as we are linked to Him 
by faith, and have accepted as our true self all that He is 
and has achieved. Hence faith is not merely the sight of 
the ideal in Christ. It is the energy of the soul as well, by 
which the believer strives to realise that which he admires. 
According to the teaching of Scripture faith has thus a 
threefold value. It is a receptive attitude, a justifying 
principle, and an energising power. It is that by which 
the believer accepts and appropriates the gift of Life offered 
by God in Christ. 

3. Obedience.—Faith contains the power of a new 
obedience. But faith worketh by love. The soul’s sur- 
render to Christ is the crowning phase of man’s response. 
The obedience of love is the natural sequel of repentance 
and faith, the completing act of consecration. As God 
gives Himself in Christ to man, so man yields in Christ to 
God all he is and all he has. 

Without enlarging upon the nature of this final act of 
self-surrender, three points of ethical value ought not to 
be overlooked. 

(1) Obedience is an activity of the soul by which the 
believer appropriates the life of God. Life is not merely a 
gift, it is a task, an achievement. We are not simply 
passive recipients of the Good, but free and determinative 
agents who react upon what is given, taking it up into our 
life and working it into the texture of our character. The 
obedience of love is the practical side of faith. While God 
imparts the energy of the Spirit, we apply it and by stren- 
uous endeavour and unceasing effort mould our souls and 
make our world. 

(2) It is a consecration of the whole personality. All the 
powers of man are engaged in soul-making. Religion is 
not a detached region of experience, a province separate 
from the incidents and occupations of ordinary existence. 
Obedience must cover the whole of life, and demands the 
exercise and devotion of every gift. Not only is every 
thought to be brought into subjection to the mind of 


x.] THE DYNAMIC OF THE NEW LIFE 179 


Christ, but every passion and desire, every activity and 
power of body and mind are to be consecrated to God and 
transformed into instruments of service. ‘Our wills are 
ours to make them thine.’ But the will is not a separate 
faculty ; it is the whole man. And the obedience of the 
will is nothing less than the response of our entire manhood 
to the will of God. 

(3) Finally, obedience is a growing power of assimilation 
to Christ. We grow in the Christian life according to the 
measure of our faith and the exercise of our love. The 
spiritual world is potentially ours at the beginning of the 
Christian life, but it has to be worked out in daily experience. 
Like every other form of existence spiritual life is a growth 
which only attains to strength and fruition through con- 
tinual conflict and achievement. The soul is not a finished 
product. In patience it is to be acquired.! By trial and 
temptation, by toil and expenditure, through all the hard- 
ships and hazards of daily life its value is determined and 
its destiny shaped. And according to the measure in which 
we use these experiences, and transmute them by obedience 
to the will of God into means of good, do we grow in Chris- 
tian character and approximate to the full stature of the 
perfect Man. 

To this self-determining activity Eucken has given the 
name of ‘ Activism.’ ‘The basis of a true life,’ says this 
writer, ‘must be continually won anew.’? Activism 
acquires ethical character inasmuch as it involves the 
taking up of the spiritual world into our own volition and 
being. Only by this ceaseless endeavour do we advance 
to fresh attainments of the moral life, and are enabled to 
assimilate the divine as revealed to us in Christ. Nor is it 
merely the individual self that is thus enriched and devel- 
oped by obedience to the will of God. By personal fidelity 
to the highest we are aiding the moral development of 
mankind, and are furthering the advancement of all that 
is good and true in the world. Not only are we making 


1 Luke xxi. 19. 
2 Life's Basis and Life's Ideal, p. 255. 


180 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (cH. x. 


our own character, but we are helping to build up the 
kingdom of God upon the earth. 

Repentance, Faith, and Obedience are thus the human 
factors of the new life. They are the moral counterparts 
of Grace. God gives and man appropriates. By repent- 
ance we turn from sin and self to the true home of our soul 
in the Fatherhood of God. By faith we behold in Christ 
the vision of the ideal self. By obedience and the daily 
surrender of ourselves to the divine will we transform the 
vision into the reality. They are all manifestations of love, 
the responsive notes of the human heart to the appeal of 
divine love. 


SECTION D 
CONDUCT 





CHAPTER XI 
VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 


So far we have gained some conception of the Christian 
ideal as the highest moral good, and have learned also how 
the Christian character is brought into being. We now 
enter upon a new section—the last stage of our inquiry— 
and have to consider the ‘new man ’—his virtues, duties, 
and relationships. 

The business lying immediately before us in this chapter 
is to consider the accepted standards in which the Christian 
good is exhibited—the virtues recognised by the Christian 
consciousness. 

What, then, are the particular forms or manifestations 
of character which result from the Christian interpretation 
of life ? When we think of man as living in relation to his 
fellows, and engaging in the common activities of the world, 
what are the special traits of character which distinguish 
the Christian ? These questions suggest one of the most 
important, and at the same time one of the most difficult, 
tasks of Christian Ethics—the classification of the virtues. 
The difficulty arises in the first instance from the ambiguity 
attaching to the term ‘virtue.’ It is often loosely used to 
signify a meritorious act—as in the phrase, ‘making a 
virtue of a necessity.’ It is frequently employed generally 
for a moral quality or excellency of character, and in this 
respect is contrasted with vice. Finally, virtues are some- 
times identified with duties. Thus we speak of the virtue 
of veracity. But obviously we may also refer to the duty 
of veracity. The word dpery signifies ‘force,’ and was 
originally used as a property of bodies, plants, or animals. 

188 


184 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


At first it had no ethical import. In Attic usage it came 
to signify aptness or fitness of manhood for public life. 
And this signification has shaped the future meaning of its 
Latin equivalent—virtus (from vis, strength, and not from 
vir, &@ man). 

Plato gave to the term a certain ethical value in con- 
nection with his moral view of the social life, so that Ethics 
came to be designated the doctrine of virtues. In general, 
however, both by the Greek and Roman moralists, and 
particularly the Stoics, the word virtus retained something 
of the sense of force or capacity—a quality prized in the 
citizen. The English word is a direct transcript of the 
Latin. The German noun, J'ugend (from taugen, to fit) 
means capability, and is related to worth, honour, manli- 
ness. The word apet) does not frequently occur in the 
New Testament.! In the few passages in which it appears 
it is associated with praiseworthiness. In one passage 2 it 
has a more distinctly ethical signification—‘ add to your 
faith virtue ’—where the idea is that of practical worth or 
manhood. 

Virtue may be defined as the acquired power or capacity 
for moral action. From the Christian point of view virtue 
is the complement, or rather the outcome, of grace. Hence 
virtues are graces. In the Christian sense a man is not 
virtuous when he has first appropriated by faith the new 
principle of life. He has within him, indeed, the promise 
and potency of all forms of goodness, but not until he has 
consciously brought his personal impulses and faculties 
into the service of Christ can he be called truly virtuous. 
Hence the Christian character is only progressively realised. 
On the divine side virtue is a gift. On the human side it is 
an activity. Our Lord’s figure of the vine and the branches 
represents the relation in which Christian character stands 
to Christ. In like manner St. Paul regards the manifesta- 
tions of the Christian life as the fruit of the Spirit—the 
inevitable and natural outgrowth of the divine seed of life 
implanted in the heart. Hence arises the importance of 


1 Phil. iv. 8; 1 Peter ii. 9. 2 2 Peter i. 5. 


XI.] VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 185 


cultivating the inner life of the spirit which is the root of 
all moral excellency. On the other hand it must be remem- 
bered that Christian morality is not of a different sort from 
natural morality, and the Christian virtues are not merely 
supernatural qualities added on, but simply human virtues 
coloured and transfigured by grace and raised to a higher 
value. The power to act morally, the capacity to bring all 
our faculties into the service of the spiritual life, is the 
ground of Christian virtue just as it is of every natural 
excellence. From this it follows that the distinction some- 
times made between natural goodness and Christian good- 
ness is unsound. A virtue is not a superlative act of 
merit, implying an excess of excellence beyond the require- 
ments of duty. From the Christian standpoint there are 
no works of supererogation, and there is no room in the 
Christian life for excess or margin. As every duty is a 
bounden duty, so every possible excellence is demanded 
of the Christian. Virtues prescribe duties ; ideals become 
laws; and the measure is, ‘ Be ye perfect as your Father 
in heaven is perfect.’ The Stoic maxim, ‘ Nothing in 
excess,’ is inadequate in reference to moral excellence, and 
Aristotle’s doctrine of the ‘Mean’ can hardly be applied 
without considerable distortion of facts. The only virtue 
which with truth can be described as a form of moderation 
is Temperance. It has been objected that by his doctrine 
of the ‘ Mean’ Aristotle ‘ obliterates the awful and absolute 
difference between right and wrong.’ If we substitute, as 
Kant suggested, ‘law’ for ‘mean,’ some of the ambiguity 
is obviated. Still, after all extenuation is made it may be 
questioned whether any term implying quantity is a fit 
expression for a moral attribute.} 

At the same time the virtues must not be regarded as 
mere abstractions. Moral qualities cannot be isolated 
from the circumstances in which they are exercised. Virtue 
is character in touch with life, and it is only in contact with 
actual events that its quality can be determined. Actions 
are not simply good or bad in themselves. They must 


1 Cf, Sir Alex. Grant, Aristotle's Ethics. 


186 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS ~ [on. 


always be valued both by their inner motives and intended 
ends. Courage or veracity, for example, may be exercised 
from different causes and for the most various ends, and 
occasionally even for those of an immoral nature.} 

For these and similar reasons some modern ethical writers 
have regarded the classification of the virtues as unsatis- 
factory, involving arbitrary and illogical distinctions in 
value ; and some have even discarded the use of the word 
‘virtue ’ altogether, and substituted the word ‘ character ’ 
as the subject of ethical study. But inasmuch as character 
must manifest itself in certain forms, and approximate at 
least to certain norms or ideals of conduct, it may not be 
altogether superfluous to consider in their relation and 
unity those moral qualities (whether we call them virtues, 
graces, or norms of excellence) which the Christian aims at 
reproducing in his life. 

We shall consider therefore, first, the natural elements 
of virtue as they have been disclosed to us by classical 
teachers. Next, we shall compare these with the Christian 
conception of life, showing how Christianity has given to 
them a new meaning and value. And finally, we shall 
endeavour to reveal the unifying principle of the virtues 
by showing that when transformed by the Christian spirit 
they are the expressions or implicates of a single spiritual 
disposition or totality of character. 


I 


The Natural Basis of the Virtues.—At a certain stage of 
reflection there arises an effort not merely to designate, but 
to co-ordinate the virtues. For it is soon discovered that 
all the various aspects of the good have a unity, and that 
the idea of virtue as one and conscious is equivalent to the 
idea of the good-will or of purity of heart. Thus it was 
seen by the followers of Socrates that the virtues are but 
different expressions of one principle, and that the ultimate 
good of character can only be realised by the actual pursuit 


1 Cf, Wundt, thik, p. 147. 


x1] VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 187 


of it in the recognised virtues. We do not sufficiently 
reflect, says Green, how great was the service which Greek 
philosophy rendered to mankind. / From Plato and Aris- 
totle comes the connected scheme of virtues and duties 
within which the educated conscience of Christendom still 
moves when it is impartially reflecting on what ought to 
be done. Religious teachers may have extended the scope 
of our obligations, and strengthened the motives which 
actuate men in the performance of duty, but ‘ the articu- 
lated scheme of what the virtues and duties are, in their 
difference and their unity, remains for us now in its main 
outlines what the Greek philosophers left it.’ ? 

Among ancient moralists four virtues, Wisdom, Courage, 
Temperance, Justice were constantly grouped. They were 
already traditional in Plato’s time, but he adopts them 
as fundamental. Aristotle retained Plato’s list, but de- 
veloped from it some minor excellences. 

Virtue, according to Plato, was the health or harmony of 
the soul; hence the principle of classification was deter- 
_ mined by the fitness of the soul for its proper task, which 
was conceived as the attainment of the good or the morally 
beautiful. As man has three functions or aspects, a cogni- 
tive, active, and appetitive, so there are three correspond- 
ing virtues. His function of knowing determines the 
primal virtue of Wisdom ; his active power constitutes the 
virtue of Courage; while his appetitive nature calls for the 
virtue of Temperance or Self-contro]. These three virtues 
have reference to the individual’s personal life. But 
inasmuch as a man is a part of a social organism, and has 
relations to others beyond himself, justice was conceived 
by Plato as the social virtue, the virtue which regulated 
and harmonised all the others. For the Stoics these four 
virtues embraced the whole life according to nature. It 
may be noticed that Plato and Aristotle did not profess 
to have created the virtues. Wisdom, fortitude, temper- 
ance, and justice were, as they believed, radical principles 
of the moral nature ; and all they professed to do was to 


1 Green, Proleg. to Ethics, § 249. 2 Idem. 


188 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


awaken men to the consciousness of their natural capaci- 
ties. If a man was to attain to fitness of life, then these 
were the fundamental and essential lines on which his 
rational life must develop. In every conceivable world 
these are the basal elements of goodness. Related as they 
are to fundamental functions of personality, they cannot 
be less or more. They stand for the irreducible principles 
of conduct, to omit any one of which is to present a maimed 
or only partial character. In every rational conception of 
life they must remain the essential and desirable objects of 
pursuit. It was not wonderful, therefore, when we remem- 
ber the influence of Greek thought upon early Christianity, 
that the four classical virtues should pass over into Chris- 
tian Ethics. But the Church, recognising that these virtues 
had reference to man’s life in relation to himself and his 
fellow-men in this world alone, added to these the three 
Pauline Graces, Faith, Hope, and Charity, as expressive 
of the divine element in man, his relation to God and the 
spiritual world. /The first four were called natural, the 
last three supernatural: or the ‘ Cardinal’ (cardo, a hinge) 
and the ‘Theological’ virtues../They make in all seven, 
the mystic perfect number, and over against these, to com- 
plete the symmetry of life, were placed the seven deadly 
sins. 


II 


Their Christian Transformation.—But now if we compare 
the cardinal virtues with the conception of goodness re- 
vealed in Scripture, we are at once conscious of a contrast. 
We seem to move in a new atmosphere, and to be con- 
fronted with a view of life in which entirely different 
values hold. 

1. While in the New Testament many virtues are 
commended, no complete description occurs in any 
single passage. The beatitudes may be regarded as our 
Lord’s catalogue of the typical qualities of life, and a 
development of virtuous life might be worked out from the 
Sermon on the Mount. Beginning with poverty of spirit, 


XI.] VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 189 


humility,"and meekness, and rising up out of the individual 
struggle of the inner man, we attain to mercifulness and 
peaceableness—the spirit which bears the poverty of others, 
and seeks to make others meek and gentle. Next the 
desire for righteousness finds expression in a readiness to 
endure persecution, to support the burden of duty in the 
midst of worldly conflict ; and finally in the highest stage 
the light of virtue shines through the clouds of struggle 
and breaks forth spontaneously, irradiating all who come 
into contact with it, and constituting man the servant of 
humanity, the light of the world.1. Or we might turn to 
the apostle Paul, who regards the virtues as the fruit of 
the Spirit, describing them in general as ‘ love, joy, peace, 
long-suffering, goodness, faith, gentleness, humility.’? A 
rich cluster is also mentioned as ‘the fruit of light ’— 
goodness, righteousness, truth. A turther enumeration is 
given in Colossians where the apostle commends compas- 
sion, kindness, humility, meekness, long-suffering, forbear- 
ance, and forgiveness.* And once more there is the often- 
quoted series in the Epistle to the Philippians, ‘ Whatsoever 
things are true, reverent, just, chaste, lovely, and kindly 
spoken of.’ Nor must we forget the characteristics of 
love presented in the apostle’s ‘ Hymn of Charity.’5 To 
these descriptions of St. Paul there ought to be added the 
remarkable passage in which St. Peter unfolds the process 
of the moral life from its seed to the perfect flower.® 
Though the authorship of this passage has been disputed, 
that fact does not make the representation less trustworthy 
and typical as an exhibition of early Christian morality. 
According to this picture, just as in St. Paul’s view, the 
whole moral life has its root in faith, and character is 
nothing else than the working out of the initial energy of 
the soul into virtue, knowledge, temperance, patience, 
godliness, brotherly kindness, and charity—all that makes 
life worthy and excellent. Character is not built like a 
house, by the addition of stone to stone. It is evolved as 


1 Matt. v. 1-16. 2 Gal. v. 22-38. 3 Col. iii. 12, 13, 
4 Phil. iv. 8. 5 1 Cor, xiii, 6 2 Peter i. 5. 


190 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


a plant from a seed. Given faith, there will ultimately 
emerge all the successive qualities of true goodness—know- 
ledge, temperance, patience—the personal virtues, rising 
upwards to godliness or the love of God, and widening 
out to brotherhood, and thence to charity or a love of 
mankind—a charity which embraces the whole world, even 
those who are not Christian: the enemy, the outcast, and 
the alien. 

These descriptions are not formal or systematic, but are 
characterised by a remarkable similarity in spirit and tone. 
They all reflect the mind of Christ, and put the emphasis 
where Jesus Himself invariably laid it—on love. But the 
point to which we desire to draw attention is the contrast 
between the classical and the Christian type of virtue. 
The difference is commonly expressed by saying that the 
pagan virtues were of a bold masculine order, whereas the 
Christian excellences are of an amiable and passive nature. 

Yet if we carefully examine the lists as given in Scripture, 
we shall see that this is hardly a just distinction. Certainly 
Christianity brings to the front some virtues of a gentle 
type which are apparently wanting in the Platonic cata- 
logue. But, on the other hand, the pagan virtues are not 
excluded from the New Testament. They have an acknow- 
ledged place in Christian morality. Fortitude and temper- 
ance, not to speak of wisdom and justice, are recognised as 
essential qualities of the Christian character. Christianity 
did not come into the world as the negative of all that was 
previously noble in human nature ; on the contrary, it took 
over everything that was good and true, and gave to it a 
legitimate place. Whatsoever things, says the apostle, are 
true and just and fair, if there be any virtue or praise in 
them, think of these things. 

Courage is not disparaged by Christianity. In writing 
to Timothy Paul gives to this virtue its original significance. 
He only raises it to a higher level, and gives to it a nobler 
end—the determination not to be ashamed of bearing 
testimony, and the readiness to suffer hardship for the 
Gospel’s sake. And though the apostle does not; expressly 


xI.] VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 191 


commend courage in its active form in any other passage, 
we may gather from the whole tenor of his life that bravery, 
fortitude, endurance, occupied a high place in his esteem. 
While he made no parade of his sufferings his life was a 
continual warfare for the Gospel. The courage of a man is 
none the less real because it is evinced not on the battle- 
field, but in the conflict of righteousness. He who devotes 
himself unnoticed and unrewarded, at the risk of his life 
and at the sacrifice of every pleasure, to the service of the 
sick and the debased, possesses courage the same in prin- 
ciple as that of the ‘ brave man’ described by Aristotle. 
Life is a battle, and there are other objects for which a man 
must contend than those peculiar to a military calling. In 
all circumstances of his existence the Christian must quit 
himself as a man, and without courage no one can fulfil in 
any tolerable degree the duties of his station. 
_. In like manner temperance or self-control is a truly 
Christian virtue, and it finds repeated mention in Scripture. 
When, however, we compare the conception of temperance 
as formulated by Aristotle with the demand of self-denial 
which the enlightened Christian conscience makes upon it- 
self we are struck with a difference both in the motive and 
the scope of the principle. / Temperance as Aristotle con- 
ceived it was a virtue exhibited only in dealing with the 
animal passions. And the reason why this indulgence 
ought to be checked was that the lusts of the flesh unfitted 
a man for his discharge of the civic duties. But, in view of 
the Greek idea that evil resides in the physical constitution 
of man, the logical deduction would be the total suppression 
of the animal passions altogether. But from the Christian 
standpoint the physical instincts are not an evil to be 
crushed, but rather a legitimate element in man which is to 
be disciplined and brought into the service of the spiritual 
life. 'Temperance covers the whole range of moral activity. 
It means the practical mastery of self, and includes the 
proper control and employment of hand and eye, tongue 
and temper, tastes and affections, so that they may become 
effective instruments of righteousness. The practice of 


192 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


asceticism for its own sake, or abstinence dictated merely 
by fear of some painful result of indulgence, we do not now 
regard as a virtue. The true form of self-denial we deem 
to be only rendered when we forbid ourselves the enjoy- 
ment of certain legitimate inclinations for the sake of some 
higher interest. ‘Thus the scope of the virtue of temperance 
has been greatly enlarged, and we present to ourselves 
objects of moral loyalty, for the sake of which we are ready 
to abandon our desires in a far greater variety of forms 
than ever occurred to the Greek. An indulgence, for 
example, which a man might legitimately allow himself, he 
forgoes in consideration of the claims of his family, or 
fellow-workmen, or for the good of mankind at large, in a 
way that the ancient world could not understand. Chris- 
tian temperance, while the same in principle with the 
ancient virtue, penetrates life more deeply, and is fraught 
with a richer and more positive content than was contem- 
plated by the Greek demand. 

And the same may be said of the virtues of Wisdom and 
Justice. Wisdom is a New Testament grace, but mere 
calculating prudence or worldly self-regard finds no place 
in the Christian scheme of life. We are enjoined, indeed, 
to be wise as serpents and harmless as doves in our relations 
with men ; but what we are urged to cultivate is a mind for 
the right interpretation of the things of God, that_spiritual 
insight which discerns the things of the Spirit} and, while 
recognising life as a divinely given trust, ‘seeks to obtain a 
wise understanding of our duties toward God and man. \ 

While the other virtues are to a certain extent self- 
regarding, Justice is eminently social. At the very lowest 
it means ‘ equal consideration’ for all, treating, as Kant 
would say, every man as an ‘end,’ and not as a means. 
Morally no man may disregard the claims of others. It is 
said, indeed, that we must be ‘ just before we are generous.’ 
But a full and perfect conception of Justice involves gener- 
osity. There is no such thing as bare justice. Righteous- 
ness, which is the New Testament equivalent, demands 
more than negative goodness, and in Christian Ethics 


x1.] VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 193 


passes over into Charity, which finds and fulfils itself in 
others. Love here and always is the fulfilling of the law, 
and mercy, benevolence, kindness are the implicates of 
true justice. 

2. It is thus evident that the cardinal virtues are essen- 
tial elements of Christian character. / Christianity, in taking 
over the moral conceptions of the ancient world, gave to 
them a new value and range by directing them to new 
objects and enthusing them with new motives. It has been 
truly said that the religion of Jesus so profoundly modified 
the character of the moral ideals of the past that they 
became largely new creations. The old moral currency 
was still kept in circulation, but it was gradually minted 
anew. Fortitude is still the cool and steady behaviour of 
a man in the presence of danger; but its range is widened 
by the inclusion of perils of the soul as well as the body. 
Temperance is still the control of the physical passions ; 
but it is also the right placing of new affections, and the 
consecration of our impulses to nobler ends. Justice is 
still the suppression of conflict with the rights of others ; 
but the source of it lies in giving to God the love which is 
His due, and finding in the objects of His thought the 
subjects also of our care. Wisdom is still the practical 
sense which chooses the proper course of action ; but it is 
no longer a selfish calculation of advantage, but the wisdom 
of men who are seeking for themselves and others not merely 
temporal good, but a kingdom which is not of this world. 

The real reason, then, why Christianity seems by contrast 
to accentuate the gentler graces is not simply as a protest 
against the spirit of militarism and the worship of physical 
power, so prevalent in the ancient world—not merely that 
they were neglected—but because they and they alone, 
rightly considered, are of the very essence of that perfection 
of character which God has revealed to man in Christ. 
What Christianity has done is not to give pre-eminence to 
one class over another, but to make human character com- 
plete. Ancient civilisation was one-sided in its moral 


1 Strong, Christian Ethics. 


194 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


development. The pagan conceptions of virtue were _ 
merely materialistic, temporal, and self-regarding. Christ 
showed that/without the spirit of love even such excellences 
as courage, temperance, and justice did not attain to their 
true meaning or yield their full implication. Paul, as we 
have seen, did not disparage heroism, but he thought that 
it was exhibited as much, if not more, in patience and for- 
giveness as in self-assertion and retaliation. What Chris- 
tianity really revealed was a new type of manliness, a fresh 
application of temperance, a fuller development of justice. 
It showed the might of meekness, the power of gentleness, 
the heroism of sacrifice. 

3. It is thus misleading to say that Christian Ethics differs 
from ancient morality in the prominence it gives to what/ 
have been called ‘ the passive virtues.’ Poverty of spirit, \, 
humility, meekness, mercifulness, and peaceableness are 
indeed the marks of Christ’s teaching. But as Christ con- 
ceived them they were not passive qualities, but intensely 
active energies of the soul. It has been well remarked that! 
there was a poverty of spirit in the creed of the cynic 
centuries before Christianity. There was a meekness in 
the doctrine of the Stoic long before the advent of Jesus. 
But these tenets were very far from being anticipations of 
Christ’s morality. Cynic poverty of spirit was but the poor- 
spiritedness of apathy. Stoic meekness was merely the 
indifference of oblivion. But the humility and lowliness 
of heart, the mercifulness and peace-seeking which Christ 
inculcated were essentially powers of self-restraint, not 
negative but positive attitudes to life. The motive was 
not apathy but love. ) These qualities were based not on 
the idea that life was so poor and undesirable that it was 
not worthy of consideration, but upon the conviction 
that it was so grand and noble, something so far beyond 
either pleasure or pain, as to demand the devotion of the 
entire seli—the mastery and consecration of all a man’s 
powers in the fulfilment and service of its divine end. 

Hence what Christianity did was not so much to institute 


1 Mathieson, Landmarks of Christian Morality. 


XI.] VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 195 


one type of character for another as to exhibit for the first 
time the complete conception of what human life should 
be—a new creature, in whom, as in its great Exemplar, 
strength and tenderness, courage and meekness, justice and 
mercy were alike combined. For, as St. Paul said, in Christ 
Jesus there is neither male nor female, but all are as one. 
And in this character, as the same apostle finely shows, 
faith, hope, and charity have the primary place, not as 
special virtues which have been added on, but as the 
spiritual disposition which penetrates the entire person- 
ality and qualifies its every thought and act. 


IIT 


The Unification of the Virtues.—While it is desirable, then, 
to exhibit the virtues in detail, it is even more important 
to trace back the virtues to virtue itself. A man’s duties 
are diverse, as diverse as the various occasions and circum- 
stances of life, and they can only come into being with the 
various institutions of his time, Church and State, home 
and country, commerce and culture. But the performance 
of these may be slowly building up in him a consistent 
personality. It is in character that the unity of the moral 
life is most clearly expressed. ‘There must be therefore a 
unity of character underlying the multiplicity of character- 
istics, one single and commanding principle at work in the 
formation of life of which every possible virtue is the 
expression. 

1. A unity of this kind is supplied by man’s relation 
to God. Religion cannot be separated from conduct. 
If it were true, as Epicurus said, that the gods take no 
concern in human affairs, then not religion only, but 
morality itself would be in danger. As men’s concep- 
tions of God are purified and deepened, they tend to 
exhibit the varied contents of morality in their connection 
with a diviner order. It is, then, the thought of man’s 
relation to God which gives coherence to the moral life, and 
brings all its diverse manifestations into unity. 


196 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


If we examine the Christian consciousness as presented 
in the New Testament, we find three words of frequent 
occurrence repeatedly grouped together, which may be 
regarded as the essential marks of Christian character in 
relation to God—Faith, Hope, and Love. 

So characteristic are these of the new life that they have 
been called the theological virtues, because, as Thomas 
Aquinas says, ‘ They have God for their object : they bring 
us into true relation to God, and they are imparted to us 
by God alone.’ ! 

2. ‘These graces, however, cannot be separated. A man 
does not exercise at one time faith, and at another time 
hope or love. They are all of a piece. They are but differ- 
ent manifestations of one virtue. Of these love is the 
greatest, because it is that without which faith and hope 
could not exist. Love is of the very essence of the Chris- 
tian life. It is its secret and sign. No other term is so 
expressive of the spirit of Christ. It is the first and last 
word of apostolic Christianity. Love may be called the 
discovery of the Gospel. It was practically unknown in 
the ancient world. é¢pws, the sensuous instinct and ¢:Aia, 
the bond of friendship, did exist, but ayd7n in its spiritual 
sense is the creation of Christ. In Christian Ethics love 
is primal and central. Here we have got down to the bed- 
rock of virtue. It is not simply one virtue among many. 
It is the quality in which all the virtues have their setting 
and unity. From a Christian point of view every excel- 
lence of character springs directly from love and is the 
manifestation of it. It is, as St. Paul says, ‘the bond of 
perfectness.” The several virtues of the Christian life are 
but facets of this one gem.? 

Love, according to the apostle, is indispensable to char- 
acter. Without it Faith is an empty profession; Know- 


1 Summa, I. ii. 

2 An interesting parallel might be drawn between the Pauline conception 
of Love as the supreme passion of the soul and lord of the emotions, and the 
Platonic view of Justice as the intimate spirit of order alike in the individual 
and the state, expressing itself in, and harmoniously binding together, the 
virtues of Temperance, Courage, and Wisdom, 


xI.] VIRTUES AND VIRTUE 197 


ledge, a mere parade of learning ; Courage, a boastful con- 
fidence ; Self-denial, a useless asceticism. Love is the 
fruitful source of all else that is beautiful and noble in life. 
It not only embraces but produces all the other graces. 
It creates fortitude ; it begets wisdom ; it prompts self- 
restraint and temperance; it tempers justice. It mani- 
fests itself in humility, meekness, and forgiveness : 
‘ As every hue is light, 
So every grace is love.’ 

Love is, however, closely associated with faith and hope. 
‘Faith, as we have seen, is theologically the formative and 
appropriating power by which man makes his own the 
spirit of Christ. But ethically it is a form of love. The 
Christian character is formed by faith, but it lives and 
works by love. A believing act is essentially a loving act. 
It is a giving of personal confidence. It implies an out- 
going of the self towards another—which is the very nature 
of love); Hope, again, is but a particular form of faith 
which’ looks forward to the consummation of the good. 
The man of hope knows in whom he believes, and he 
anticipates the fulfilment of his longings. Hope is essen- 
tially an element of love. Like faith it is'‘a form of idealism. 
It believes in, and looks forward to, a better world because 
it knows that love is at the heart of the universe.,/ As faith 
is the special counteragent against fistecater in the 
present, so hope is the special corrective of pessimism in 
regard to the future. Love supplies both with vision. 
Christian hope, because based on faith and prompted by 
love, is no easy-going complacence which simply accepts 
the actual as the best of all possible worlds. The Christian 
is a man of hope because in spite of life’s sufferings he never 
loses faith in the ideal which love has revealed to him. 
‘Tribulation,’ says St. Paul, ‘worketh patience, and 
patience probation, and probation hope.’ Hope has its 
social aspect as well as its personal; like faith it is one of 
the mighty levers of society. Men of hope are the saviours 
of the world. In days of persecution and doubt it is their 
courage which rallies the wavering hosts and gives others 


198 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


heart for the struggle. Every Christian is an optimist not 
with the reckless assurance that calls evil good, but with 
the rational faith, begotten of experience, that good is yet 
to be the final goal of ill. ‘Thy kingdom come’ is the 
prayer of faith and hope, and the missionary enterprise is 
rooted in the confidence begotten of love, that He who has 
given to man His world-wide commission will give also the 
continual presence and power of His Spirit for its fulfilment. 

3. Faith, hope, and charity are at once the root and fruit 
of all the virtues. They are the attributes of the man 
whom Christ has redeemed. The Christian has a threefold 
outlook. He looks upwards, outwards, and inwards. His 
horizon is bounded by neither space nor time. He embraces 
all men in his regard, because he believes that every man 
has infinite worth in God’s eyes. The old barriers of 
country and caste, which separated men in the ancient 
world, are broken down by faith in God and hope for man 
which the love of Christ inspires. Faith, hope, and love 
have been called the theological virtues. But if they are 
to be called virtues at all, it must be in a sense very different 
from what the ancients understood by virtue. These apos- 
tolic graces are not elements of the natural man, but states 
which come into being through a changed moral character. 
They connect man with God, and with a new spiritual order 
in which his life has come to find its place and purpose. 
They were impossible for a Greek, and had no place in 
ancient Ethics. They are related to the new ideal which 
the Gospel has revealed, and obtain their value as elements 
of character from the fact that they have their object in 
the distinctive truth of Christianity—fellowship with God 
through Christ. 

These graces are not outward adornments or optional 
accomplishments. They are the essential conditions of the 
Christian man. They constitute his inmost and necessary 
character. They do not, however, supersede or render 
superfluous the other virtues. On the contrary they 
transmute and transfigure them, giving to them at once 
their coherence and value. 


Xu. ] THE REALM OF DUTY 199 


CHAPTER XII 
THE REALM OF DUTY 


WE have now to see how the virtues issue in their corre- 
sponding duties and cover the whole field of life. 

Virtues and duties cannot be strictly distinguished. As 
Paulsen remarks, ‘They are but different modes of pre- 
senting the same subject-matter.’1 Virtues are permanent 
traits of character; duties are particular acts which seek 
to realise virtues. 

The word ‘duty,’ borrowed from Stoic philosophy, in- 
adequately describes, both on the side of its obligation and 
its joy, the service which the Christian is pledged to offer 
to Christ. For the Christian the two moments of pleasure 
and duty are united in the higher synthesis of love. 

In this chapter we shall consider, first, some aspects of 
Christian obligation ; and, second, the particular duties 
which arise therefrom in relation to the self, others, and 
God. 


I 
ASPECTS OF Duty 


1. Duty and Vocation.—‘ While duty stands for a uni- 
versal element there is a personal element in moral require- 
ment which may be called vocation.’* As soon as the 
youth enters upon the larger world he has to make choice 
of a profession or life-work. Different principles may 
guide him in his selection. First of all, the circumstances 

1 Paulsen, Hthics, bk. 111. chap.i. Cf. also Wundt, Hthik, p. 148. But see 


also W. Wallace, Lectures and Essays, p. 325, on their confusion. 
2 Mackintosh, Chr, Ethics, p. 114. 


200 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


of life will help to decide the individual’s career. Our 
calling and duties arise immediately out of our station. 
Already by parental influence and the action of home- 
environment character is being shaped, and tastes and pur- 
poses are created which will largely determine the future. 
Next to condition and station, individual capacity and 
disposition ought to be taken into account. No good work 
can be accomplished in uncongenial employment. A man 
must have not only fitness for his task, but also a love for 
it. Proper ambition may also be a determining factor. 
We have a right to make the most of ourselves, and to 
strive for that position in which our gifts shall have fullest 
scope. But the ultimate decision must be made in the light 
of conscience. Self-interest should not be our sole motive 
in the choice of a vocation. It is not enough to ask what 
is most attractive, what line of life will ensure the greatest 
material gain or worldly honour ? Rather should we ask, 
Where shall I be safest from moral danger, and, above all, 
in what position of life, open to me, can I do the most 
good ? It is not enough to know that a certain mode of 
livelihood is permitted by law ; I must decide whether it is 
permitted to me as a Christian. For, after all, underlying, 
and giving purpose and direction to, our earthly vocation 
is the deeper calling of God into His kingdom. These 
- cannot, indeed, be separated. We cannot divide our life 
into two sections, a sacred and a secular. Nor must we 
restrict the idea of vocation to definite spheres of work. 
Even those who are precluded by affliction from the activi- 
ties of the world are still God’s servants, and may find in 
suffering itself their divinely appointed mission. There is 
a divinity which shapes our ends, and in every life-calling 
there is something sacred. ‘Saints,’ says George Eliot, 
‘choose not their tasks, they choose but to do them well.’ 

But the decisions of life do not cease with the choice of a 
calling. At every moment of our career fresh difficulties 
arise, and new opportunities open up which demand careful 
thought. Our first obligation is to meet faithfully the 
claims of our station. But in the complexity of life we are 


x1] THE REALM OF DUTY 201 


being constantly brought into wider relations with our 
fellow-men, which either modify the old, or create entirely 
new situations. While the rule is to do the duty that lies 
nearest us, to obey the call of God at each moment, it needs 
no little wisdom to discern one’s immediate duty, and to 
know what the will of God actually is. 

2. Conflict of Duties.—In the sphere of duty itself a three- 
fold distinction, having the imprimatur of the Romish 
Church, has been made by some moralists : (1) the problem 
of colliding interests; (2) ‘counsels of perfection’; and 
(3) indifferent acts or ‘ Adiaphora,’ actions which, being 
neither commanded nor forbidden, fall outwith the domain 
of Christian obligation. It will not be necessary to discuss 
at length these questions. The Gospel lends no support to 
such distinctions, and as Schleiermacher points out they 
ought to have no place in Protestant Ethics.! 

(1) With regard to the ‘conflict of duties,’ when the 
collision is really, as it often is, a struggle between inclina- 
tion and duty, the question answers itself. There are, of 
course, cases in which perplexity must occur to an honest 
man. But the difficulty cannot be decided by drawing up 
a list of axiomatic precepts to fit all conceivable cases. 
In the dilemma, for example, between self-preservation and 
self-sacrifice which may present itself in some tragic 
experience of life, a host of considerations relative to the 
individual’s history and relationships enter in to modify 
the situation, and the course to be taken can be finally 
determined by a man’s own conscience alone. Ultimately 
there can be no collision of duties as such. Once a man 
recognises a certain mode of conduct to be right for him 
there is really no choice. In judgment he may err; 
passion or desire may obscure the issue ; but once he has 
determined what he ought to do there is no alternative, 
‘er kann nicht anders.’ 

(2) Again, it is a complete misapprehension of the nature 
of duty to distinguish between the irreducible minimum 
and acts of supererogatory goodness which outrun duty. 


1 Cf. Haering, Ethics of Chr. Life, p. 280. 


202 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cx 


Goodness is one, and admits of no degrees. All duty is 
absolute. An overplus is unthinkable, since no man can 
do more than his duty. A Christian can only do what he 
recognises as his obligation, and this he ought to fulfil at 
every moment and with all his might. Love, which is the 
Christian’s only law, knows no limit. Even when we have 
done our utmost we are still unprofitable servants. 

(3) Finally, the question as to whether there are any acts 
which are indifferent, permissible, but neither enjoined 
nor forbidden, must also be answered in the negative. 
If the Christian can do no more than his duty, because in 
every single action he seeks to fulfil the whole will of God, 
it is clear that there can be no moment of life that can be 
thought of not determined by the divine will. ‘There is no 
part of life that is colourless. There must be no dropped 
stitches in the texture of the Christian character. 

It is most frequently in the domain of amusement that 
the notion of the ‘ Permissible’ is applied. It has been 
contended that as recreation really lies outwith the Chris- 
tian sphere, it may be allowed to Christian people as a con- 
cession to human weakness.! But can this position be 
vindicated ? Relaxation is as much a need of man as 
work, and must, equally with it, be brought within the 
scope of Christian conduct. We have no business to engage 
in any activity, whether involving pleasure or pain, that-we 
cannot justify to our conscience. Are not the joys of life, 
and even its amusements, among God’s gifts designed for 
the enriching of character? And may not they, too, be 
consecrated to the glory of God ?. We are to use the world 
while not abusing it, for all things are ours if we are Christ’s. 
Over every department of life the law of Christ is sovereign, 
and the ultimate principle applicable to all problems of 
duty is, ‘ Whatsoever ye do in word or deed do all to the 
glory of God.’ 

3. Rights and Duties.—The foregoing question as to the 
scope of duty leads naturally to the consideration of the 
relation of duties and rights. It is usual to distinguish 


1 This seems to be the position of Herrmann ; see Hthik. 


xi. ] THE REALM OF DUTY 203 


between legal and moral rights; but at bottom they are 
one. The rights which I legally claim for myself I am 
morally bound to grant to others. A right is expressed in 
the form of a permission ; a duty, of animperative. I may 
or may not demand my legal rights ; morally, I must per- 
form my duties. But, on the other hand, a right may be 
secured by legal compulsion ; a duty, as a moral obligation, 
can never be enforced by external power: it needs our 
own assent.? 

Strictly speaking rights and duties are correlative. 
Every right carries with it an obligation ; not merely in the 
objective sense that when one man has a right other men 
are under the obligation to respect it, but also in the sub- 
jective sense that when a man has a right he is bound to 
use it for the general good. It is sometimes said, ‘A man 
may do what he likes with his own.’ Legally that may be 
true, but morally he is under obligation to employ it for 
the general good just as strictly as if it were another’s. A 
man’s rights are not merely decorations or ends in them- 
selves. They are opportunities, instruments, trusts. And 
when any man has them, it means that he is placed on a 
vantage-ground from which, secure of oppression or inter- 
ference, he may begin to do his duty. But this moral 
aspect of right is often lost sight of. People are so enam- 
oured of what they call their rights that they forget that 
the real value of every right depends upon the use to which 
they put it. A man’s freedom does not consist in having 
rights, but in fulfilling them. ‘ After all,’ says Mazzini, 
‘the greatest right a man can possess or recognise—the 
greatest gift of all—is simply the privilege and obligation 
to do his duty.’* This is the only Christian doctrine of 
rights. It underlies our Lord’s teaching in the parable of 
the Talents. We only have what we use. 

(1) Much has been written of the ‘ Natural rights of Man.’ 4 
This was the claim of a school of political philosophy of 


1 Cf. Eucken, Life's Basis, p. 185. 

2 Maccunn, Ethics of en ak p. 40. 

8 Duties of Man, chap. 

4 See discussion by late W. Wallace in Lectures and Essays, pp. 213 ff. 


204 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (cu. 


which Paine was the most rigorous exponent. The con- 
tentions of Paine were met as vigorously by the negations 
of Bentham and Burke. And if it be supposed that the 
individual is born into the world with certain ready-made 
possessions, fixed and unalterable, the claim is untenable. 
Such an artificial account of man ignores entirely the 
evolution of moral nature, and denies the possibility of 
development in man’s conception of law and duty. ‘It 
is,’ as Wundt says, ‘ to derive all the moral postulates that 
have been produced in our minds by previous moral 
development from moral life as it actually exists.’ } 

(2) But while the ‘natural rights of man’ cannot be theo- 
retically vindicated, they may still be regarded as ends or 
ideals to be striven after. ‘Justifiable or unjustifiable in 
theory, they may still remain a convenient form in which to 
couch the ultimatum of determined men.’? They give 
expression, at least, to a conviction which has grown more 
clear and articulate with the advance of thought—the 
conviction of the dignity and worth of the individual. This 
thought was the keynote of the Reformation. The Enlight- 
enment, with its appeal to reason, as alike in all men, gave 
support to the idea of equality. Descartes claimed it as 
the philosophical basis of man’s nature. Rousseau and 
Montesquieu were among its most valiant champions. 
Kant made it the point of departure for the enforcement of 
human right and duty. Fichte but elaborated Kant’s view 
when he contended for ‘ the equality of everything which 
bears the human visage.’ ? And Hegel has summed up the 
conception in what he calls ‘ the mandate of right ’—‘ Be a 
person, and respect others as persons.’ * Poets sometimes 
see what others miss. And in our country, at least, it is 
to Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning, and still more, 
perhaps, to Burns, that we are indebted for the insistence 
upon the native worth of man. 

But if this claim has only gradually attained to articulate 


1 Ethtk, p. 190. 2 Maccunn, op, cit., p. 42. 
3 Cf. Eucken, Main Currents of Modern Thought, p. 348. 
4 Hegel, Philosophy of Right, p. 45. 


xi2.] THE REALM OF DUTY 205 


expression, and is only now being made the basis of social 
reconstruction, it must not be forgotten that it is essentially 
a Christian truth. In Harnack’s language, ‘ Jesus Christ 
was the first to bring the value of every human soul to light, 
and what He did no one can any more undo.’ } 

When, however, the attempt is made to analyse this 
ultimate principle of manhood, opinions differ as to its 
constituents, and a long list of ‘ rights ’ claimed by different 
political thinkers might be made. The famous ‘ Declara- 
tion of Rights’* included Life, Liberty, Property, Security, 
and ‘ Resistance of Oppression.’ To these some have 
added ‘ Manhood Suffrage,’ ‘ Free Access to the Soil,’ and 
a common distribution of the benefits of life and means of 
production. This is a large programme, and certainly no 
community as yet has recognised all its items without 
qualification. Obviously they are not all of the same 
quality, nor are they of independent validity; and at 
best they but roughly describe certain factors, con- 
sidered by various agitators as desirable, of an ideal social 
order. 

(3) We are on safer ground, and for Christian Ethics, at 
least, more in consonance with ultimate Christian values, 
when we describe the primary realities of human nature in 
terms of the revelation of life as given by the Person and 
teaching of Jesus Christ. The three great verities upon 
which He constantly insisted were, man’s value for himself, 
his value for his fellow-men, and his value for God. ‘These 
correspond generally to the three great ethical ideas of life— 
Personality, Freedom, and Divine Kinship. But although 
the sense of independence, liberty and divine fellowship is 
the first aspect of a being who has come to the consciousness 
of himself, it is incomplete in itself. Man plants himself 
upon his individuality in order that he may set out from 
thence to take possession, by means of knowledge, action, 
and service, of his larger world. Man’s rights are but 


1 Das Wesen des Christenthums ; cf. also cece Homo, p. 245. 
2 Adopted in Massachusetts in 1773.—‘ All men have equal rights to life, 
liberty, and property.’ 


206 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


possibilities which must be transmuted by him into 
achievements. 


‘This is the honour,—that no thing I know, 
Feel, or conceive, but I can make my own 
Somehow, by use of hand or head or heart.’} 


Rights involve obligations. The right of personality carries 
with it the duty of treating life, one’s own and that of 
others, as sacred. The right of freedom implies the use of 
one’s liberty for the good of the society of which each is a 
member. And finally, the sense of divine kinship involves 
the obligation of making the most of one’s life, of realising 
through and for God all that God intends in the gift of life. 

In these three values lies the Christian doctrine of man.? 
Because of their fullness of implication they open out to our 
vision the goal of humanity—the principle and purpose of 
the whole process of human evolution—the perfection of 
man. Given these three Christian truths—the Sacredness 
of Personality, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Father- 
nood of God—and all that is essential in the claim of the 
‘Natural Rights of Man’ is implicitly contained. The one 
thing needful is that men become alive to their privileges 
and go forward to ‘ possess their possessions.’ 


II 
SPHERES OF Duty 


We are thus led to a division, natural if not wholly logical, 
of duties which spring from these rights—duties towards 
self, others, and God. Though, indeed, self-love implies 
love of others, and all duty is duty to God, still it may be 
permissible to frame a scheme of duties according as one 
or other element is prominent in each case. 

1. Duties in Relation to Self.—It is obvious that without 
(1) respect for self there can be no respect for others. Iam 


1 Browning, Prince Hohenstiel-Schwangau. 
2 Cf. Wheeler Robinson, The Christian Doctrine of Man, pp. 281 f. 


XII] THE REALM OF DUTY 207 


a part of the moral whole, and an element in the kingdom 
of God. I cannot make myself of no account. Our Lord’s 
commandment, ‘ Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’ 
makes a rightly conceived self-love the measure of love to 
one’s neighbour. Self-respect involves (2) self-preservation, 
the care of health, the culture of body and mind. Not only 
is it our duty to see that the efficiency and fitness of the 
bodily organism is fully maintained, but we must also guard 
it against everything that would defile and disfigure it, or 
render it an instrument of sin. Christianity requires the 
strictest personal purity, purity of thought and feeling as 
well as of deed. It demands, therefore, constant vigilance, 
self-control, temperance, and even self-denial, so that the 
body may be, not, as the ancients thought, the prison-house 
of the soul, but the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christianity 
is, however, opposed to asceticism. ‘Though Jesus denied 
Himself to the uttermost in obedience to the voice of God, 
there is in His presentation of life a complete absence of 
those austerities which in the history of the Church have 
been so often regarded as marks of superior sanctity.1 It 
is unnecessary here to dwell upon athletics and sport which 
now so largely occupy the attention of the youth of our 
land. Physical exercise is necessary to the maintenance 
of bodily fitness, yet it may easily become an all-absorbing 
pursuit, and instead of being merely a means to an end, 
may usurp the place in life which belongs to higher things. 

(3) Self-maintenance involves also the duty of self- 
development, and that not merely of our physical, but also 
of our mental life. If the body has its place and function 
in the growth of Christian character, still more has the mind 
its ethical importance. Our Maker can have no delight in 
ignorance. He desires that we should present not a frag- 
mentary but complete manhood. Specialisation, though 
a necessity of the age, is fraught with peril to the individual. 
The exigencies of labour require men to concentrate their 
energies on their own immediate tasks; but each must 
seek to be not merely a craftsman, but a man. Other sides 


1 Matt. xi. 18; Luke vii. 33. 


208 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


of our nature require to be cultivated besides those which 
bring us into contact with the ways and means of existence. 
Indeed, it is only by the possession of a well-trained mind 
that the fullest capacity, even for special pursuits, can be 
obtained. It has become a commonplace to say that every 
man should have equality of opportunity to earn a liveli- 
hood. But equality of opportunity for education, as some- 
thing which ought to be within the reach of every youth 
in the land, is not so frequently insisted upon. Beyond 
the claims of daily occupation every one should have a 
chance, and, indeed, an inducement, to cultivate his mental 
and spiritual nature. Hence what is called ‘ culture,’ the 
all-round development of the human faculties, is an essen- 
tial condition of moral excellence. For, as Goethe has said, 
the object of education ought to be rather the formation 
of tastes than simply the communication of knowledge. 
But most important of all the self-regarding aims of life is 
the obligation of Self-discipline, and the use of every means 
of moral culture which the world supplies. It is through 
the complex conditions of earthly existence that the char- 
acter of the individual is developed. It will only be pos- 
sible to indicate briefly some of the aids to the culture of 
the moral life. Among these may be mentioned: (a) The 
Providential Experiences of life. The world itself, as a 
sphere of Work, Temptation, and Suffering, is a school of 
character. The affections and cares of the home, the duties 
and tasks incident to one’s calling, the claims of one’s 
fellow-men, the trials and temptations of one’s lot—these 
are the universal and common elements in man’s moral 
education. Not to escape from the world’s activities and 
conflicts, but to turn them into conditions of self-mastery, 
is the duty of each. Men do work, but work makes men. 
The shopkeeper is not merely selling wares; the artisan 
or mechanic is not simply engaged in his handicraft; the 
mason and builder are not only erecting a house ; each is, 
in and through his toil, making his own soul. And so, too, 
suffering and temptation are the tools which God commits 
to His creatures for the shaping of their own lives. Saints 


xl. } THE REALM OF DUTY 209 


and sinners are made out of the same material. By what 
Bosanquet has finely called ‘the miracle of will’ the raw 
stuff of life is taken up and woven into the texture of the 
soul. (b) The so-called secular opportunities of culture. 
Innumerable sources of self-enrichment are available. 
Everything may be made a vehicle of moral education. 
Knowledge generally, and especially the ministry of nature, 
the influence of art, and the study of literature, are potent 
factors in the discipline and development of Christian 
character. To these must be added (c) The special religious 
aids and means of grace. From an ethical point of view 
the Church is a school of character. It ‘ guards and keeps 
alive the characteristic Christian ideas, and thereby exhibits 
and promotes the Christian ideal of life.’1 Its fellowship, 
worship, and ordinances; its opportunities of brotherly 
service and missionary activity, as well as the more private 
spiritual exercises of prayer and meditation—all are means 
of discipline and gifts committed to the stewardship of 
individuals in order that they may realise the greatness of 
life’s possibilities, and attain through union with God to 
the fullness of their stature in Christ. 

But while the truth that the soul has an inalienable worth 
is repeatedly affirmed, the New Testament touches but 
lightly upon the duties of self-regard. To be occupied 
constantly with the thought of one’s self is a symptom of 
morbid egoism rather than of healthy personality. The 
avidity. of self-improvement and even zeal for religion may 
become a refined form of selfishness. We must be willing 
at times to renounce our personal comfort, to restrain our 
zest for intellectual and esthetic enjoyment, to be content 
to be less cultured and scholarly, less complete as men, and 
ready to part with something of our own immediate good 
that others may be ministered to. Hence the chief reason 
probably why the Scriptures do not enlarge upon the duties 
of self-culture is, that according to the spirit of the Gospel 
the true realisation of self is achieved through self-sacrifice. 
Only as a man loses his life does he find it. To horde one’s 


1 Ottley, /deas and Ideals. 


210 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


possessions is to waste them. Growth is the condition of 
life. But in all growth there is reciprocity of expenditure 
and assimilation, of giving and receiving. Self-realisation 
is only gained through self-surrender. Not, therefore, by 
anxiously standing guard over one’s soul, but by dedicating 
it freely to the good of others does one achieve one’s true 
self. 

2. Duties in Relation to Others.—We belong to others, and 
others belong tous. They and we are alike parts of a larger 
whole. 

(1) While this is recognised in Scripture, and all men are 
declared to be brothers in virtue of their common humanity, 
Christianity traces the brotherhood of man to a deeper 
source. The relation of the individual to Christ is the true 
ground of love to others. In Christ all distinctions which 
in other respects separate men are dissolved. Beneath 
the meanest garb and coarsest features, in spite even of 
the defacement of sin, we may detect the vast possibilities 
of the soul for whom Christ has died. The law of love is 
presented by Jesus as the highest of all the commandments, 
and the duty to others is summed up generally in what is 
known as the golden rule. Of the chief manifestations of 
brotherly love mention must be made (a) of the compre- 
hensive duty of Justice. The ground upon which justice 
rests is the principle that each individual is an end in 
himself. Hence it is the duty of each to respect the rights 
of his neighbours, negatively refraining from injury and 
positively rendering that which our fellow-men have a 
right to claim. Religion makes a man more sensitive to 
the claims of humanity. Mutual respect requires a constant 
effort on the part of all to secure for each the fullest freedom 
to be himself. Christianity interprets justice to. mean 
emancipation from every condition which crushes or 
degrades a man. It seeks to create a social conscience, 
and to arouse in each a sense of responsibility for the good 
of all. At the same time social justice must not be identi- 
fied with charity. Charity has done much to relieve dis- 
tress, and it will always form an indispensable element in 


XII. ] THE REALM OF DUTY 211 


the Christian’s duty towards his less fortunate brethren ; 
but something more radical than almsgiving is required if 
the conditions of life are to be appreciably bettered. 
Justice is a demand not for bread alone; it is a claim of 
humanity to life, and all that life ought to mean. Chris- 
tianity affirms the spirit of human brotherhood—a brother- 
hood in which every child will have a chance to grow to a 
noble manhood, and every man and woman will have 
opportunity and encouragement to live a free, wholesome, 
and useful life. That is the Christian ideal, and to help 
towards its realisation is the duty laid upon every citizen 
of the commonwealth. The problems of poverty, housing, 
unemployment, intemperance, and all questions of fair 
wages, legitimate profits, and just prices, fall under the 
regulative principle of social justice. The law is, ‘ Render 
to all their dues.’ The love which worketh no ill to his 
neighbour will also withhold no good.? 

(6) Truthfulness.—Justice is not confined to acts, but 
extends to speech and even to thought. We owe to others 
veracity. Even when the motive is good, there can be no 
greater social disservice than to fail in truthfulness. False- 
hood, either in the form of hypocrisy or equivocation, and 
even of unsound workmanship, is not only unjust to others ; 
it is unjust to ourselves, and a wrong to the deeper selfi—the 
new man in Christ.? 

Is deception under all circumstances morally wrong ? 
Moralists have been divided on this question. The instance 
of war is frequently referred to, in which it is contended 
that ruse and subterfuge are permissible forms of strategy.® 
There are, however, many distressing cases of conscience, 
in which the duties of affection and veracity seemingly 
conflict. It must be remembered that no command can 
be carried out to its extreme, or obeyed literally. Truth 
is not always conveyed by verbal accuracy. There may be 
higher interests at stake which might be prejudiced, and 
indeed unfairly represented by a merely literal statement. 


1 Rom. xiii. 7-10. 2 Col. iii. 9, 10, 
3 See Lecky, Map of Life. 


212 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


The individual conscience must decide in each case. We 
are to speak the truth in love. Courage and kindliness are 
to commingle. But when all is said it is difficult to avoid 
the conclusion that in the last analysis lack of truth argues 
a deficient trust in the ultimate veracities of the universe, 
and rests upon a practical unbelief in the divine providence 
which can make ‘ all things work together for good to them 
that love God.’ 

(c) Connected with truthfulness, and also a form of 
justice, is the duty enjoined by St. Paul of forming just 
| judgments of our fellow-men. If we would avoid petty 
fault-finding and high-minded contempt, we must dismiss 
all prejudice and passion. The two qualities requisite for 
proper judgment are knowledge and sympathy. Goethe 
has a fine couplet to the effect that ‘ it is safe in every case 
to appeal to the man who knows.’! But to understanding 
must be added appreciative consideration. We must 
endeavour to put ourselves in the position of our brother. 
Without a finely blended knowledge and sympathy we grow 
intolerant and impatient. Fairness is the rarest of moral 
qualities. He who would estimate another truly must 
have what St. Paul calls ‘spiritual discernment ’—the 
‘“even-balanced soul’ of one ‘ who saw life steadily and 
who saw it whole.’ 

(2) Brotherly Love evinces itself further in Service, which 
takes the three forms of Compassion, Beneficence or prac- 
tical kindness, and Example. 

(a) Compassion or sympathy is a readiness to enter into 
the experiences of others. As Christians nothing that 
concerns our brother can be a matter of indifference to us. 
As members of the same spiritual community we are 
participators in each other’s joys and sorrows, ‘ weeping 
with those that weep, and rejoicing with those that rejoice.’ 
It is no mere natural instinct, but one which grows out of 
the Christian consciousness of organic union with Christ. 
‘When one member suffers, all the members suffer with it.’ 2 


1 Vor dem Wissenden sich stellen, sicher tst’s in allen Féllen, 
21 Cor. xii. 26. 


XII. ] THE REALM OF DUTY 213 


We fulfil the law of Christ by bearing one another’s 
burdens. 

(6) Practical Beneficence is the natural outcome of sym- 
pathy. Feelings pass into deeds. Those redeemed by the 
love of Christ become the agents of His love, gladly dis- 
pensing to others what they themselves have received. 
The ministry of love, whatever shape it may take, must, in 
the last resort, be a giving of self. No one can do a kind- 
ness who does not put something of himself into it. No 
true service can be done that does not cost us more than 
money. 

In modern society it is inevitable that personality should 
largely find its expression and exercise in material pos- 
sessions. Without entering here upon the question of the 
institution of private property, it is enough to say that the 
possession of material goods may be morally defended on 
the twofold ground, that it ensures the security of exist- 
ence, and is an essential condition of the development of 
individual and national resources. The process of acquisi- 
tion is a moralising influence, since it incites the individual 
to work, and tends to create and foster among men inter- 
change of service. Property, says Hegel, is the embodi- 
ment and instrument of the will.t But in a civilised com- 
munity there must be obviously restrictions to the acquisi- 
tion and use of wealth. Unbridled appropriation and 
irresponsible abuse are alike a peril to society. The State 
has therefore the right of interference and control in 
regard to all possessions. Even on the lowest ground of 
expediency the very idea of property involves on the part 
of all the principle of co-operation and reciprocity—the 
obligation of contributing to the general weal. It would, 
however, be most undesirable that the government should 
undertake everything for the general good of man that is 
now left to spontaneous effort and liberality. But from 
the standpoint of Christian Ethics possessions of all kinds 
are subject to the law of stewardship.? Every gift is 


1 Phil. of Right, pp. 48 ff. ; see also Wundt, Hthik, pp. 175 f. 
2 Cf. Ottley, Idem, p. 271. 


214 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


bestowed by God for the purpose of social service. No man 
can call the things which he possesses—endowments, wealth, 
power—his own. He is simply a trustee of life itself. No 
one may be an idler or parasite, and society has a just 
claim upon the activity of every man. The forms of such 
service are various ; but the Christian spirit will inspire a 
sense of ‘the ultimate unity of all pursuits that con- 
tribute to the good of man.’ 4 

The ministry of love extends over the whole realm of 
existence, and varies with every phase of need. Physical 
necessities are to be met in the spirit of charity. St. Paul 
pleads repeatedly the cause of the poor, and commends the 
grace of liberality. Giving is to be cheerful and without 
stint. But there are needs which material aid cannot 
meet—desolation, anxiety, grief—to which the loving heart 
alone can find ways of ministering. And beyond all 
physical and moral need is the need of the soul; and it lies 
as a debt upon those who themselves have experienced the 
grace of Christ to seek the renewal and spiritual enrichment 
of their brethren. 

(c) There is one special form of practical kindness towards 
others which a follower of Christ will often be called upon 
to exercise—the spirit of forbearance and forgiveness. The 
Christian is to speak evil of no man, but to be gentle, show- 
ing all meekness unto all men; living peaceably with all 
men, avoiding everything provocative of strife; even 
‘forbearing one another and forgiving one another, if any 
have a quarrel against any ; even as Christ forgave you so 
also do ye.’ 

(3) Finally, we may serve others by Example, by letting 
the light of life so shine before men that they seeing our 
good works shall glorify God our Father. This duty, how- 
ever, as Fichte points out, ‘has often been viewed very 
incorrectly, as if we could be obliged to do this or that, 
which otherwise we would not have needed to do, for the 
sake of a good example.’ ? That which I am commanded 


1 Green, Proley., p. 178, quoted by Ottley. 
2 Science of Hthics (trans.), p. 337. 


XII.] THE REALM OF DUTY 215 


to do I must do for its own sake without regard to its effect 
upon others. Esteem can be neither outwardly compelled 
nor artistically produced; it manifests itself voluntarily 
and spontaneously. A modern novelist ! ironically exposes 
this form of altruism by putting into the mouth of one of 
her characters the remark, ‘ I always make a point of going 
to church in order to show a good example to the domestics.’ 
At the same time no one can withhold one’s influence ; and 
while the supreme motive must be, not to make a display, 
but to please God, he who is faithful to his station and its 
duties cannot fail to affect his fellow-men for good. The 
most effective example is given unconsciously, as the rose 
exhales its sweetest perfume without effort, or the light sheds 
its radiance simply by being what it is. 

3. Duties in Relation to God.—Here morality runs up into 
religion, and indeed since all duties are in their last analysis 
duties toward God, Kant and other moralists have objected 
to the admission into Ethics of a special class of religious 
obligations. It has been well remarked that the genuine 
Christian cannot be known by particular professions or 
practices, but only by the heavenly spirit of his life.2 Hence 
religious duty cannot be formulated in a number of precise 
rules. Love to God finds expression not in mechanical 
obedience, but in the spontaneous outflow of the heart. 
The special duties to the Divine Being may be briefly 
described under the main heads of Recognition, Obedience, 
and Worship. 

(1) Recognition.—The acknowledgment of God rests upon 
knowledge. Without some comprehension of what God is 
there can be no intelligent allegiance to Him. We cannot, 
indeed, by logical reasoning demonstrate the existence of 
the Deity any more than we can demonstrate our own 
being. But He has not left Himself without a witness, and 
He speaks to man with many voices. The material crea- 
tion is the primary word of God. The beauty, and still 
more the sublimity, of nature are a revelation through 


1 Miss Fowler, Concerning Isabel Carnaby. 
2 Drummond, Via, Veritas, Vita, p. 227. 


216 | CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


matter of something beyond itself, a message of the spirit- 
ual, bearing ‘authentic tidings of invisible things.’ But 
nature is symbolic. It is a prophecy rather than an im- 
mediate revelation. Still it warrants the expectation of a 
yet fuller manifestation. That fuller utterance we have in 
man himself. There, spirit reveals itself to spirit ; and in 
the two primary intuitions of man—self-consciousness and 
the sense of moral obligation—the presence of God is dis- 
closed. But, higher still, the long historic evolution has 
culminated in a yet clearer manifestation of the Deity. 
In Christ, the God-Man, the mystery underlying and brood- 
ing over the world is unveiled, and to the eye of faith is 
revealed the Fatherhood of God. 

The first duty, therefore, we owe to God is that of recog- 
nition, the acknowledgment of His presence in the world. 
To feel that He is everywhere, sustaining and vitalising all 
things ; to recognise His will in all the affairs of our daily 
life, is at once the duty and blessedness of man. 

(2) Obedience follows acknowledgment. It is partly 
passive and partly active. 

(a) As passive, it takes the form of habitual trust or 
acquiescence, the submissive acceptance of trials which are 
ultimately, we believe, not really evils, because ordained by 
God and overruled for good.! This spirit of obedience can be 
maintained by constant vigilance alone. While connected 
with the anticipated coming of the Son of Man, the 
obligation had a more general application, and may be 
regarded as the duty of all in the face of the unknown 
and unexpected in life. We are therefore to watch for 
any intimation of the divine will, and commit ourselves 
trustfully to the absolute disposal of Him in whose hands 
are the issues of our lives. 

(6) But obedience has also an active side. Faithfulness 
is the complement of faith. The believer must exercise 
fidelity, and go forward with energy and purpose to the 
tasks committed to him. As stewards of Christ we are 


1 Matt. viii. 25 f., x. 26; Luke viii. 23 f. 
2 Matt. xxv. 1 f.; Mark xxiv. 42; Luke xii. 36 f. 


Xu. ] THE REALM OF DUTY 217 


to occupy till He come, employing every talent entrusted 
to us in His service. Work may be worship, and we can 
glorify God in our daily tasks. No finer tribute can a man 
give than simply himself. 

(3) Worship.—The special duties of worship belong to 
the religious rather than the ethical side of life, and do not 
demand here more than a passing reference. The essence 
of religion lies in the subordination of the finite self to the 
infinite ; and worship is the conscious outgoing of the man 
in his weakness and imperfection to his Maker, and it attains 
its fullest exercise in (a) reverence, humility, and devo- 
tion. The feeling of dependence and sense of need, together 
with the consciousness of utter demerit and inability which 
man realises as he gazes upon the majesty and grace of God, 
awaken the (6) instinct of prayer. ‘It is the sublime 
significance of prayer,’ says Wuttke, ‘that it brings into 
prominence man’s great and high destiny, that it heightens 
his consciousness of his true moral nature in relation to 
God; and as morality depends on our relation to God, 
prayer is the very life-blood of morality.’1 The steadfast 
aspiration of the soul to God, whose will is our law and 
whose blessing is granted to whatsoever is done in His 
name, is the habitual temper of the Christian life. But 
prayer must also be particular, definite, and expectant. 
By a law of our nature, and apart from all supernatural 
intervention, prayer exercises a reflex influence of a very 
beneficial character upon the mind of the worshippers. 
But he who offers his petitions expecting nothing more will 
not even attain this. ‘If prayers,’ says Mr. Lecky, ‘ were 
offered up solely with a view to this benefit, they would be 
absolutely sterile and would speedily cease.’ 2 The purely 
subjective view of prayer as consisting solely in ‘ beneficent 
self-suggestion ’ empties the term of significance. Even 
Frederick Meyers, who lays so much stress upon the 
importance of self-suggestion in other aspects of experience, 
admits that prayer is something more than a subjective 


1 Ohr. Ethics (trans.), vol. ii. p. 221, 
2 Hist. of Europ. Morals, vol. i. p. 36. 


218 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cu. 


phenomenon. ‘It is not only a calling up of one’s own 
private resources; it must derive its ultimate efficacy 
from the increased flow from the infinite life into the life 
of the suppliant.’ 4 

(c) Prayer attains its highest expression in Thanksgiving 
and Joy. Gratitude is the responsive feeling which wells 
up in the heart of those who have experienced the goodness 
of God, and recognise Him as the great Benefactor. Chris- 
tians are to abound in thankfulness. We live in a world 
where everything speaks to us of divine love. Praise is the 
complement of prayer. The grateful heart sees life trans- 
figured. It discovers everywhere tokens of grace and 
hope, 

‘Making the springs of time and sense 
Sweet with eternal good.’ 


Peace, trust, joy, hope are the ultimate notes of the Chris- 
tian life. ‘ Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in every- 
thing give thanks.’ Thanksgiving, says St. Bernard, ‘is 
the return of the heart to God in perpetual benediction.’ 


In the kingdom of love duty is swallowed up in joy. 
Life is nothing but the growing realisation of God. With 
God man’s life begins, and to Him turns back at last in 
the wrapt contemplation of His perfect being. In fellowship 
with God man finds in the end both himself and his brother. 


‘What is left for us, save, in growth 
Of soul, to rise up, far past both, 
From the gift looking to the Giver, 
From the cistern to the river, 
And from the finite to the Infinity 
And from man’s dust to God’s divinity?’ ? 


‘God,’ says Green, ‘is a Being with whom we are in prin- 
ciple one, in the sense that He is all which the human 
spirit is capable of becoming.’ * In the worship of God, 


1 Human Personality, vol. ii. p. 313. 
2 Browning, Christmas Eve. 8 Proleg., p. 198. 


xin] THE REALM OF DUTY 219 


man dies to the temporal interests and narrow ends of the 
exclusive self, and lives in an ever-expanding life in the life 
of others, manifesting more and more that spiritual prin- 
ciple which is the life of God, who lives and loves in all 
things.? 


1 Cf, Jones, Browning as Philosophical and Religious Teacher, p. 367. 


220 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


CHAPTER XIII 
SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 


In last chapter we dealt with the rights and duties of the 
individual as they are conditioned by his relation to him- 
self, others, and to God. In this chapter it remains to 
speak more particularly of the organised institutions of 
society in which the moral life is manifested, and by 
means of which character is moulded. These are the 
Family, the State, and the Church. These three types of 
society, though distinguishable, are Closely allied. At first, 
indeed, they were identical. Human society had its origin, 
most probably, in a primitive condition in which domestic, 
political, and religious ends were one. Even in modern 
life Family, State, and Church do not stand for separate 
interests. So far from their aims colliding they are mutu- 
ally helpful. An individual may be a member of all three 
at one time. From a Christian point of view each is a 
divine institution invested with a sacred worth and a holy 
function, and ordained of God for the advancement of 
His kingdom. 


I 


The Family is the fountain-head of all the other social 
groups, ‘ the cell of the social organism.’ Man enters the 
world not as an isolated being, but by descent and genera- 
tion. In the family each is cradled and nurtured, and by 
the domestic environment character is developed. The 
family has a profound value for the nation. Citizenship 
rests on the sanctity of the home. When the fire on the 
hearth is quenched, the vigour of a people dies. 


XIII] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 221 


1. Investigations of great interest and value have been 
pursued in recent years regarding the origin and evolution 
of the family. However far back the natural history of 
the race is carried, it seems scarcely possible to resist the 
conclusion that some form of family relationship is coeval 
with human life. Widely as social arrangements differ in 
detail among savage peoples, arbitrary promiscuity can 
nowhere be detected. Certain laws of domestication have 
been invariably found to exist, based upon definite social 
and moral restrictions universally acknowledged and rigidly 
enforced. ‘Two primitive conditions are present wherever 
man is found—the tribe and the family. If the family is 
never present without the tribe, the tribe is never dis- 
covered without ‘ those intra-tribal distinctions and sexual 
regulations which lie at the bottom of the institution of 
the family.’! Westermarck indeed says that ‘ the evidence 
we possess tends to show that among our earliest human 
ancestors the family and not the tribe formed the nucleus 
of every social group, and in many cases was itself perhaps 
the only social group. The tie that kept together husband 
and wife, parents and children, was, if not the only, at least 
the principal factor in the earliest forms of man’s social 
life.’ ? If the family had been an artificial convention 
called into being by human will and ingenuity, it might 
conceivably be destroyed by the same factors. But what- 
ever arguments may be adduced for the abolition of 
marriage and family life to-day, the appeal to primitive 
history is not one of them. On the contrary the earliest 
forms of society show that the family is no invention, 
that it has existed as long as man himself, and that all 
social evolution has been a struggle for the preservation 
of its most valuable features.’ 

2. If, even in early times, and especially among the 
Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, the family was an important 
factor in national development, it has been infinitely more so 


1 Lofthouse, Ethics of the Family, p. 77. 
2 Hist. of Human Marriage, p. 538. 
3 The literature on this subject is enormous. See speeially works of 
Westermarck, M‘Lennan, Frazer, Hobhouse, Audrew Lang, and lhering. 


222 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


since the advent of Christianity. Christ did not create this 
relationship. He found it in existence when He came to 
the earth. But He invested it with a new ethical value. 
He laid upon it His consecrating touch, and made it the 
Vehicle of all thatismost tender and truein Human affection, 
so that among Christian people to-day no word is fraught 
with such hallowed associations as the word ‘home.’ This 
He did both by example and teaching. As a member of a 
human family Himself, He participated in its experiences 
and duties. He spent His early years in the home of 
Nazareth, and was subject unto His parents. He mani- 
fested His glory at a marriage feast. By the grave of 
Lazarus He mingled His tears with those of the sorrowing 
sisters of Bethany. He had a tender regard for little 
children, and when mothers brought their infants to Him 
He welcomed them with gracious encouragement, and, 
taking the little ones in His arms, blessed them, thus 
consecrating for all time both childhood and motherhood. 
Throughout His life there are indications of His deep rever- 
ence and affection for her who was His mother, and with 
His latest breath he confided her to the care of His beloved 
disciple. 

There are passages indeed which seem to indicate a 
depreciation of family relationships. The most important 
of these are the sayings which deal with the home con- 
nections of those whom He called to special discipleship.? 
Not only are father and mother to be loved less than He, but 
even in comparison with Himself are to be hated. Among 
the sacrifices His servants must be ready to make is the 
surrender of the home.‘ But these references ought to be 
taken in conjunction with, and read in the light of, His 
more general attitude to the claims of kindred. It was not 
His indifference to, but His profound regard for, home ties 
that drew from Him these words. He knew that affection 
may narrow as well as widen the heart, and that our tender- 


1 See chap. vii. in Garvie’s Studies in Inner Life of Jesus. 
2 Matt. viii. 21, 22; Luke ix. 59-62. 
3 Luke xiv. 26 ; Matt. x. 37. 4 Mark x. 29, 30. 


XIII. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 223 


est intimacies may bring our most dangerous temptations. 
There are moments in the history of the heart when the 
lesser claim must yield to the greater. For the Son of Man 
Himself, there were interests higher even than those of the 
family. Some men, perhaps even most, are able to fulfil 
their vocation without a surrender of the joys of kinship. 
But others are called to a wider sphere and a harder task. 
For the sake of the larger brotherhood of man, Jesus found 
it necessary to renounce the intimacies of home. What it 
cost Him to do so we, who cannot fathom the depth of His 
love, know not. Even such an abandonment did He 
demand of His first disciples. And for the follower of 
Christ still there must be the same willingness to make the 
complete sacrifice of everything, even of home and kindred, 
if they stand in the way of devotion to the kingdom of 
God.? 

(1) Our Lord’s direct statements regarding the nature 
of the family leave us in no doubt as to the high place it 
holds in His conception of life. arriage, upon which the 
family rests, is, according to Jesus, the divinely ordained 
life-union of a man and woman. In His quotation from 
Genesis He makes reference to that mysterious attraction, 
deeply founded in the very nature of man, by which 
members of the opposite sex are drawn to each other. 
But while acknowledging the sensuous element in marriage, 
He_lifts it up into the spiritual realm and transmutes it 
into a symbol of soul- -communion. Our Lord does not 
derive the sanction of wedded life from Mosaic legislation. 
Still less does He permit it as a concession to human 
frailty. It has its ground in creation itself, and while 
therefore it is the most natural of earthly relationships it is 
of God’s making. To the true ideal of marriage there are 
several features which our Lord regards as indispensable. 
(a) It must be monogamous, the fusion of two distinct 
personalities. ‘They two shall be one flesh.’ Mutual 
self-impartation demands that the union should be an ex- 
clusive one. (0) It is a union of equality. Neither person- 


POR nth ki ke Lae 


224 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


ality is to be suppressed. The wedded are partners who 
share one another’s inmost thoughts and most cherished 
purposes. But this claim of equality does not exclude but 
rather include the different functions which, by reason of 
sex and constitution, each is enabled to exercise. ‘Woman 
is not undeveloped man but diverse.’ And it is in diversity 
that true unity consists. Both will best realise their per-— 
sonality in seeking the perfection of one another. (c) It 
is a permanent union, indissoluble till the parting of death. 
The only exception which Christ acknowledges is that form 
of infidelity which 1pso facto has already ruptured the sacred 
bond. According to Jesus marriage is clearly intended 
by God to involve sacred and permanent obligations, a 
covenant with God, as well as with one another, which dare 
not be set aside at the dictate of a whim or passion. The 
positive principle underlying this declaration against 
divorce is the spirit of universal love that forbids that the 
wife should be treated, as was the case among the dissolute 
of our Lord’s time, as a chattel or slave. Nothing could be 
more abhorrent to Christian sentiment than the modern 
doctrine of ‘ leasehold marriage’ advocated by some.? It 
has been ingeniously suggested that the record of marital 
unrest and divorce in America, shameful as it is, may not 
be in many cases altogether an evil. The very demand to 
annul a union in which reverence and affection have been 
forfeited may spring from a growing desire to realise the 
true ideal of marriage.? (d) Finally, it is a spiritual union. 
It is something more than a legal contract, or even an 
ecclesiastical ordinance. The State must indeed safeguard 
the civil rights of the parties to the compact, and the 
Church’s ceremony ought to be sought as the expression of 
divine blessing and approval. But of themselves these 
do not constitute the inner tie which makes the twain one, 
and binds them together amid all the chances and changes 
of this earthly life.4 In the teaching of both Christ and 


1 Matt. v. 32, xix. 3-10; Mark x. 11, 12. 

2 See Forsyth. Marriage: its Ethics and Religion. 
3 King, “thics of Jesus, p. 69. 

4 Stalker, Hthic of Jesus, p. 336. 


x111.] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 225 


the apostles marriage is presented as a high vocation, 
ordained by God for the enrichment of character, and in- 
vested with a holy symbolism. According to St. Paul it is 
the emblem of the mystic union of Christ and His Church, 
and is overshadowed by the presence of God, who is the 
archetype of those sacred ideas which we associate with the 
name of fatherhood. 

(2) Though marriage is the most personal of all forms 
of social intercourse, there are many varied and intricate 
interests involved which require legal recognition and ad- 
justment. Questions as to the legitimacy of offspring, 
the inheritance of property, the status and rights of the 
contracting parties, come within the domain of law. The 
State punishes bigamy, and forbids marriage within certain 
degrees of consanguinity. Many contend that the State 
should go further, and prevent all unions which endanger 
the physical vigour and efficiency of the coming generation. 
It is undoubtedly true that the government has a right to 
protect its people against actions which tend to the de- 
terioration of the race. To permit those to marry who are 
suffering from certain maladies of mind or body is to 
commit a grave crime against society. But care must be 
taken lest we unduly interfere with the deeper spiritual 
sympathies and affections upon which a true union is 
founded. In agitating for State control in the mating of 
the physically fit, the champions of eugenics are apt to 
exaggerate the materialistic side of marriage, and overlook 
those qualities of heart and mind which are not less im- 
portant for the well-being of the race. In the discipline of 
humanity weakness and suffering are assets which the 
world could ill afford to lose. 

(3) In modern times the institution of marriage is 
menaced by two opposite forces; on the one hand, by a 
revolutionary type of socialism, and on the other, by the 
reactionary influence of self-interested individualism. (a) 
It is contended by some advanced socialists that among 


1 Though Nietzsche does not use the word he may be regarded as the 
father of modern eugenics. 


tens 
a 


226 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


the poor and the toiling home life is practically non- 
existent ; indeed, under present industrial conditions, im- 
possible. Marriage and separate family life are insuper- 
able barriers, it is said, to corporate unity and _ social 
progress. It is but fair to add that this extreme view is 
now largely repudiated by the most enlightened advocates 
of a new social order, who are contending, they tell us, not 
for the abolition, but for the betterment, of domestic con- 
ditions.1 (6) The stability of social life is being threatened 
even more seriously by a self-centred individualism. 
Marriage is considered as a merely temporary arrangement 
which may be terminated at will. It is contended that 
divorce should be granted on the easiest terms, and the 
most trifling reasons are seriously put forward as legitimate 
grounds for the annulling of the holiest of vows. Without 
discussing these disintegrating influences, it is enough to 
say that the trend of history is against any radical tamper- 
ing with the institution of marriage, and any attempt to 
disparage the sanctity of the home or belittle domestic 
obligations would be to poison at its springs the moral life 
of man. 

3. The duties of the various members of the family are 
explicitly, if briefly, stated in the apostolic epistles. They 
are valid for all times and conditions. Though they may 
be easily elaborated they cannot well be improved. All 
home obligations are to be fulfilled im and wnto the Lord. 
The fear of God is to inspire the nurture of children, and to 


. sanctify the lowliest services of the household. Authority is 


to be blended with affection. (1) Parents are not to provoke 
their children by harsh and despotic rule, nor yet to spoil 
them by soft indulgence. Children are to render obedience, 
and, when able, to contribute to the support of their 
parents.2 Masters are to treat their servants with equity 
and respect. Servants are exhorted to show fidelity. In 
short all the relationships of the household are to be 
hallowed by the spirit of Christian love. 

Many questions relative to the family arise, over which 


1 Cf, Ramsay Macdonald, Socialism. 2 Mark vii. 9-13. 


Xiu. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 227 


we may not linger. One might speak of the effect of ah 


dustrial conditions upon domestic life, the employment 
of women and children in factories, the evil of sweating, 
the problem of our city slums, and, generally, of the need 
of improved environment in order that our labouring classes 
may have a chance of a healthier and purer home existence. 
Legislation can do much. But even law is ineffective to 
achieve the highest ends if it is not backed by the public 
conscience. The final solution of the problem of the family 
rests not in conditions but in character, not in environment 
but in education, in the kind of men we are rearing. 

(2) This century has been called the woman’s century. 
And certainly there is an obvious trend to-day towards 
acknowledgment, in all departments of life, of women’s 
equality with men. Thereis, however, a difference of opinion 
as to what that equality should mean; and there seems 
to be a danger in some quarters of overlooking the essential 
difference of the sexes. No people can achieve what it 
ought while its wives and mothers are degraded or denied 
their rights. For her own sake, as well as for the weal of 
the race, whatever is needful to enable woman to attain to 
her noblest womanhood must be unhesitatingly granted.! 

(3) But this is even more the children’s era. A new 


sense of reverence for the child is one of the most promising ~ 


notes of our age, and the problems arising out of the 
care and education of the young have created the new 
sciences of pedagogy and child- -psychology. Regard for 
child-life owes its inspiration directly to the teaching of 


aT CIT gf NNN wrcemenat 


Christ. The child in the simplicity of its nature and inno- 
“cence of its dependence is, according to the Master, the 
perfect pattern of those who seek after God. It is true that 
in the art of antiquity child-life was frequently represented. 
But as Burckhardt says it was the drollery and playfulness, 
even the quarrelsomeness and stealth, and above all the 
lusty health and animal vigour of young life that was de- 
picted. Ancient art did not behold in the child the pro- 
phecy of a new and purer world. Moreover, it was esthetic 


1 Cf. King, The Moral and Religious Challenge of our Times, pp. 42 f. 


oe emer, J 


228 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


feeling and not real sympathy with childhood which ani- 
mated this movement. As time went on the teaching of 
Christ on this subject was strangely neglected, and the 
history of the treatment of the young is a tragic tale of 
neglect and suffering. Only now are we recovering the 
lost message of Jesus in regard to the child, and we are 
beginning to realise that infancy and youth have their 
rights, and demand of the world both care and affection. 
Ours sons and daughters are the nation’s assets. Yet it is 
a parent’s question even more than the State’s. In a 
deeper sense than we imagine children are the creation of 
their parents. Itis the effect of soul upon soul, the mother’s 
touch and look, the father’s words and ways, that kindle 
into flame the dull material of humanity, and begin that 
second birth which should be the anxiety and glory of 
parenthood. But if the parent makes the child, scarcely 
less true is it that the child makes the parent. In the give 
‘and take of home life a new world is created. When a 
father really looks into his child’s eye he is not as he was 
before.!_ Indispensable as is the State’s education of the 
young, there is an important part which the community 
cannot undertake, and there is a danger in curbing indivi- 
duality by a stereotyped method of instruction. ‘ All 
social enactments,’ says Harnack, ‘have a tendency to 
circumscribe the activities of the individual. If we unduly 
fetter the free play of individual effort we break the main- 
spring of progress and enterprise, and create a state of 
social immobility which is the antecedent of national 
decay.’? Youth ought to be taught self-reliance and 
strenuousness of will ; and this is a gran which can only be 
done in the home by the firm yet kindly influence of the 
parents. But there is another aspect of the home problem 
not less pressing. The want of training in working-class 
families is largely answerable for the waifs and strays with 
which our cities team. Even in middle-class households 
there are indications of a lack not only of discipline, but of 


1 Cf. W. Wallace, Lects. and Addresses, p. 114. 
2 Aus Leben und Wissenschaft. 


XIU. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 229 


that kindly sympathy and affectionate counsel on the part 
of parents, and of reverence and frankness in the children ; 
with the result that the young people, missing the attach- 
ment and interest which the home should supply, seek their 
satisfaction outside the domestic circle, often with the 
most disastrous results. The problem of the family is thus 
the problem of nurturing the very seeds of the moral life. 
Within the precincts of the nation’s homes the future of 
the commonwealth is being determined. 


II 


1. The State is the supreme controller of social relation- 
ships. As distinguished from the family and the Church, 
it is the realm of organised _force working for social ends. 


LUE Bat # ite 


Its purpose is to secure the conditions. of life essential to 
order and progress, and it can fulfil its function only as it 
is endowed with power to enforce its authority. The inter- 
ference of the State with the liberty of the individual has 
created a reaction in two opposite quarters towards com- 
plete abrogation of all State compulsion. On the one side 
Tolstoy pleads for the removal of force, because it violates 
the principle of love and subverts the teaching of Jesus— 
‘Resist not evil.’ Militant anarchism as the other extreme 
demands the abrogation of authority, because it believes 
that restraint hinders progress and happiness, and that if 
governmental force were abolished individuals would be 
best able to take care of themselves. The aim of anarchism 
is to destroy force by force; the aim of Tolstoy is to allow 
force to do its worst. Such a spirit of non-resistance would 
mean the overthrow of all security, and the reversion to 
wild lawlessness. It is.an_uttertravesty-ofChrist’s teach- 
ing. Extremes meet. Violence and servility join hands. 
Anarchism and Tolstoyism reveal the total bankruptcy of 
unrestricted individualism. 

The social order for which the State stands is not so much 
an interference with the freedom of the subject as the con- 
dition under which alone individual liberty can be preserved. 


230 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS (cH. 


The view, however, that the State is an artificial relationship 
into which men voluntarily enter in order to limit their 
selfish instincts and to secure their mutual advantages— 
the theory of the ‘social contract ’"—has been discarded 
in modern times as a fiction of the imagination. It is not 
of his own choice that the individual becomes a member 
of society. Heisbornintoit. Mani whole in him- 
self. He is only complete-in_his fellows. As he serves 
others he serves-himself. But men are not the unconscious 
functions of a mechanical system. They are free, living 
personalities, united by a sense of human obligatiou. and 
kindredship. The State is more than a physical organisin. 
It is a community of moral aims and ideals. Even law, 
which is the soul of the State, is itself the embodiment of 
a moral principle; and the commonwealth stands for a 
great ethical idea, to the fulfilment of which all its citizens 
are called upon to contribute. 

2. The reciprocal duties of the State and its citizens 
receive comparatively little prominence in the New Testa- 
ment. But they are never treated with disparagement 
or contempt. During our Lord’s earthly life the supreme 
power belonged to the Roman Empire. Though Jesus had 
to suffer much at the hands of those in authority, His 
habitual attitude was one of respect. He lived in obed- 
ience to the government of the country, and acknowledged 
the right of Cesar to legislate and levy taxes in his own 
province. While giving all deference to the State officials 
before whom He was brought, He did not hesitate to remind 
them of the ideal of truth and justice of which they were 
the chosen representatives: St. Paul’s teaching is in 
harmony with his Master’s, and is indeed an expansion 
of it.2 ‘The powers that be are ordained of God. Render 
therefore to all their dues, tribute to whom tribute.’ 
Beyond, however, enjoining the necessity of work as a 
means of independence, and recommending that each 
should remain in the sphere in which he has been placed, 
and perform conscientiously the duties of his calling, we 


1 Matt. xii. 18-22; John xviii. 23, xix, 10 f. 2 Rom. xiii. 


xi. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 231 


find little direct reference in the Epistles to the matter of 
citizenship. But as has been truly said ‘the citizen has 
but to stand in his station, and perform its duties, in order 
to fulfil the demands of citizenship.’! St. Paul’s insistence 
therefore upon the personal fidelity of every man to the 
duties of his sphere goes far to recognise that spirit of 
reciprocal service which is the fundamental idea of the 
commonwealth. 

3. Of the two extreme views as to the meaning of the 
State between which the verdict of history has wavered— 
that of Augustine, who regarded the State as the result of 
man’s sinful condition and as the direct antithesis of the 
kingdom of God; and that of Hegel, who saw in it the 
highest ethical form of society, the realisation of the moral 
ideal—the view of St. Paul may be said to have approxi- 
mated more nearly to the latter. Writing to the Christians 
at Rome Paul does not suggest that it was merely for 
prudence’ sake that they should give to the Imperial Power 
unquestioning obedience. He appeals to the _loftiest 
motives. All authority is of God in its origin and ultimate 
purpose. What does it matter to him whether Nero be a 
devil or a saint? He is the prince upon the throne. He 
is the symbol of divine authority, ‘ the minister of God to 
thee for good.’ As a Christian Paul looks beyond the 
temporal world-power as actually existing. Whatever 
particular form it may assume, he sees in the State and its 
rulers only the expression of God’s will. Rome is His 
agent, oppressive, and, it may be, unjust, but still the 
channel through which for the moment the Almighty works 
for the furtherance of His purposes.? 

The conception of the State as thus formulated involves 
a twofold obligation—of the State towards its citizens, 
and of its citizens towards the State. 

(1) As the embodiment of public right the State owes 
protection to its subjects, guarding individual privileges 
and prohibiting such actions as interfere with the general 


1 Sir H. Jones, Jdealism as a Practica! Creed, p. 1238. 
2 Some sentences are here borrowed from author’s Ethics of St. Paul. 


OO x 


Smee 
, 


232 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


good. Itsfunctions, however, are not confined to restrictive 
measures. _Its duty is not only to protect the rights of the 
individual, but to create and maintain such conditions of 
life as are essential t to the development of personality. In 


fn ek ra 


its own interests it is bound to foster the growth of char- 
acter, and to promote culture and social well-being. In 
modern times we look to the State not only to protect life 
and property, but to secure for each individual and for all 
classes of men that basis of material well-being on which 
alone life in its truest sense can be built up. The govern- 
ment must therefore strike some kind of balance between 
the extremes of individualism and socialism. While the old 
theory of laissez-faire, which would permit every man to 
follow his own individual bent without regard to the 
interests of others, has been generally repudiated, there is 
still a class of politicians who ridicule the ‘ night watch- 
man’ idea of the State as Lassalle calls it. ‘ Let there be 
as little State as possible,’ exclaims Nietzsche. According 
to such thinkers the State has only negative functions. 
The best government is that which governs least, and allows 
the utmost scope to untrammelled individual enterprise. 
But if there is a tendency on the part of some to return 
to the individualistic principle, the ‘paternal’ idea as 
espoused by others is being carried to the verge of socialism. 
The function of the State is stretched almost to breaking 
point when it is conceived as the ‘ guardian angel’ who 
accompanies and guards with perpetual oversight the whole 
life of the individual from the cradle to the grave. Many 
of the more cautious writers 1 of the day are exposing the 
dangers which lurk in the bureaucratic system of govern- 
ment. This tendency is apt to crush individual enter- 
prise, and cause men to place entire reliance upon external 
aid and centralised power. It is indeed difficult to draw 
a fast line of demarcation between purely individual and 
social ends. There are obviously primary interests belong- 
ing to society as a whole which the State, if it is to be the 
instrument of the common good, ought to control; certain 


1 #.g. Eucken, Kindermann, Mallock, and earlier H. Spencer. 


x1.] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 233 


activities which, if permitted as monopolies, become a 
menace to the community, and which can be satisfactorily 
conducted only as departments of the State. National 
life is_a_unity, and it can only maintain its’ integrity 
as it secures for tall ite ‘constituents, justice, equity before 
the law,.and freedom of each to be himself. The State 
ought to protect those who in the competitive struggle 
of the modern industrial system find themselves at a hope- 
less disadvantage. It is the duty of the commonwealth 
to secure for each the opportunity to become what he is 
capable of being, and to fulfil the functions for which he 


is best fitted. The State cannot make 1 men moral, but it. 


can interfere with existing conditions so as to make the 
moral life easier for its citizens. Criminal law cannot 
create saints, but it can punish evil-doers and counteract 
the forces of lawlessness which threaten the social order. 
It cannot legislate within the domain of motive, but it can 
encourage self-restraint and thrift, honesty and temper- 
ance. It cannot actually intermeddle with the sanctity 
of the home, or assume the role of paternal authority, but 
it can insist upon the fulfilment of the conditions of 
decency and propriety ; it can condemn insanitary dwellings, 
suppress traffic in vice, supervise unhealthy trades, protect 
the life and health of workmen, and, generally, devise 
means for the culture and the advancement, intellectually 
and morally, of the people. The State in some degree 
embodies the public conscience, and as such it has the 
prerogative of awakening and stimulating the consciences 
of individuals. As a divine institution it is one of the 


islemtemiesemenadlinioadinamaaahieanamaste 


channels through which God makes His will known to man. 


ep ATCT ETE, 


Law has an e in ethical import, and the State which is founded 


YT 


~ 


upon just and beneficent laws moulds the customs and | 


forms the characters of its citizens. 

(2) But if the State is to fulfil its ideal function it must 
rely upon the general co-operation of its citizens. The 
measure of its success or failure will depend upon the 
extent to which an enlightened sense of moral obligation 


prevails in the community. Men must rise above their 


ieee 


234 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


own immediate interests and realise their corporate being. 
Government makes its will dominant through the voice of 
the people. It cannot legislate beyond the sympathies 
of its constituents. As the individuals are, so the common- 
wealth will be. Civil duties vary according to the quali- 
fications and opportunities of individuals. But certain 
general obligations rest upon all. 

(a) Itis the duty of all to take an interest in public affairs. 
What concerns us collectively is the concern of each. 
Everything that touches the public good should be made 
a matter of intelligent and watchful interest by all. (6) 
It is the duty of all to conform to the laws of the country. 
It is possible that a particular enactment may conflict with 
the dictates of conscience, and it may be necessary to 
protest against what seems to be an injustice. No rule 
can be laid down for exceptional cases. Generally it will 
be best to submit to the wrong, while at the same time 
using all legitimate means to secure the repeal of the ob- 
noxious law. And if they will revolt, martyrs must not 
complain nor be unready to submit to the penalties in- 
volved. (c) It is the further duty of all to take some 
personal part in the government—if not by active service, 
at least by the conscientious recording of one’s vote. 
Christians must not leave the direction of the nation’s 
affairs to non-Christians. The spirit of Christ forbids 
moral indifference to anything human.” All: are not fitted 
for, or calledupon to take, public office; but it is incum- 
bent upon every.man_to maintain an intelligent public 
spirit, and to exercise all the duties. of good. citizenship. It 
has been truly said that they who give most to the State 


_ get most from the State. It is the men who play their part 


as active citizens working for the nation’s cause who enrich 
their own lives and reap the harvest of a full existence. 
Not by withdrawal from social service, but in untiring 
labour for their country’s weal, shall men win for themselves 
and their brethren the fruits of liberty and peace. For 
nations as for men emancipation may come with a stroke, but 
freedom can be earned only by strenuous and united toil. 


xu. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 235 


(3) Already these ideals have begun to take shape. The 
most significant feature of modern times is the growing 
spirit of democracy. Men of all classes are awakening to 
their rights, and are accepting their share in the task of 
social reconstruction. ‘We know how the masses,’ says 
Eucken, ‘ are determined to form a mere dependent body 
of the so-called higher classes no longer, but to take the 
problem of life independently into their own hands.’ ? 
But while the modern democratic movement is not without 
its hopeful aspects, it is fraught also with grave perils. It 
is well that the people should awake to their obligations, 
and realise the meaning of life, especially in its social im- 
plications. But there is a danger that culture may not 
advance with emancipation, and while the masses demand 
their rights they may not at the same time discern their 
duties. For rights involve duties, and emancipation, as 
we have seen, is not liberty. The appeal of the socialistic 
party is to the equality of all who bear human features. 
It sounds plausible. But there never has been, nor never 
can be, such equality. Nature and experience alike reveal 
a pronounced and insuperable inequality among men. The 
law of diversity strikes deep down into the very origin and 
constitution of mankind. The equality proclaimed by the 
French Revolutionists is now regarded as an idle dream. 
Not equality of nature but. equity before the law, justice for 
all, the opportunity for every man to realise himself and 
make the most of the life and the gifts which God has given 
him—that is the only claim which can be truly made. 
‘The only idea,’ says Eucken, ‘ which can give to equality 


any meaning is the conviction that humanity has spiritual 


relations, that each individual has a value for himself and 
for the whole because he is a part of a larger spiritual world.’ 
Hence if democracy is truly to come to its own and fulfil 
its high vocation, the Pauline figure of the reciprocal in- 
fluence of the body and its members must be proclaimed 
anew as the ideal of the body politic—a unity fulfilling itself 
in difference—an organic life in which the unit finds its 


1 Tafe’s Ideal and Life’s Basis. 


236 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


place of security and service in the whole, and the whole 
lives in and acts through the individual parts. 

If we are to awaken to the high vocation of the Christian 
state, to realise the possibilities of our membership one 
with another, a new feeling of manhood and of national 
brotherhood, a new pride in the community of life, must 
take possession of our hearts. We need, as one has said, 
a baptism of religious feeling in our corporate consciousness, 
a new sense that we are serving God in serving our fellows, 


‘- which will hallow and hearten the crusade for health and 


social happiness, and give to every citizen a sense of spiritual 


\_ service. 


III 


Unlike the family and State the Church is the creation 
of Jesus Christ. It is the witness of His Presence in the 
world. Initsideal form itis world-wide. The Redemption 
for which it stands is a good for all men. Though in prac- 
tice many do not acknowledge its blessing, the Church 
regards no man beyond its pale of grace. It is set in the 
midst of the world as the symbol and pledge of God’s 
universal love. 

1. The Relation of Church and State is a difficult question 
with a long history, and involving much controversy. 
Whatever view may be held as to their legal connection, 
their interests can never be regarded as inimical. The 
Church cannot be indifferent to the action of the State, 
nor can the State ignore the work of the Church. But since 
their spheres are not identical nor their aims entirely 
similar, the trend of modern opinion seems to indicate 
that, while working in harmony, it is more satisfactory 
that they should pursue independent paths. There are 
spiritual ends committed to the Church by its Head over 
which the civil power has no jurisdiction. On the other 
hand there are temporal concerns with which ecclesiastical 
courts have neither the vocation nor the qualifications to 
deal. Still, the Church, as the organ of Christian thought 


xi. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 237 


and activity, has responsibilities with regard to civil 
matters. While secant agent in the regenera- 


a0 ne eae aS Se 


tion of man, religion itse épendent upon all’ social 
means, and ihe Church must regard with sympathy every 
effort made by the community for moral improvement. 
The main function of the Church in this connection is to 
keep before its members a high ic | ideal of social life, to create 
a spirit of fidelity in every sphere of activity, and, parti- 
cularly, to educate men for the tasks of citizenship. The 
State, on the other hand, as the instrument of civic life, 
has obligations towards the Church. Its duty is hardly 
exhausted by observing an attitude of non-interference. 
In its own interests it is bound, not merely to protect, but 
encourage the Church in the fulfilment of its immediate 
aims. Parliament, however, must concede to ecclesiastical 
bodies complete liberty to govern themselves. The Church, 
as the institution of Christ, claims full autonomy ; and the 
State goes beyond its province when it imposes hampering 
restrictions which interfere with the exercise of its authority 
and discipline within its own sphere. 

2. As a religious institution the Church exists for three 
main purposes: (1) the Worship of God and the Edification 
of its members; (2) the Witness of Christ to Mankind ; 
(3) the Hvangelisation of the World. 

(1) The first of these objects has already been dealt 
with when treating of the duties to God. It is only needful 
to add here that the Church is more than a centre of 
worship ; it is the home of kindred souls knit together by 
a common devotion to Christ. It is the school of character 
which seeks the mutual edification of its members ‘ by 
provoking one another to love and to good works.’ Hence 
among Protestants the duty of Church Discipline is acknow- 
ledged, which deals with such sins or lapses from rectitude 
as constitute ‘ offences’ or ‘ scandals,’ and tend to bring 
into disrepute the Christian name and profession. In the 
Roman Church, the Confessional, through which moral 
error is avowed, with its system of penances, has in view 
the same object—viz., to reprove, correct, and reclaim 


238 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


those who have lapsed into sin—thus seeking to fulfil 
Christ’s ideal ‘ to despair of no man.’ 

(2) But the Church is also a rallying place of service. 
Both in its corporate capacity, and through the lives of its 
individual members, the Church seeks to bear constant 
witness to the mind of Christ. It proclaims His living 
example. It reiterates His will and embodies His judg- 
ment, approving of what is good, condemning what is evil, 
and ever more confronting the world with the high ideal 
of the divine Life and Word. Not all who bear the name 
of Christ are consistent witnesses. But still the aim of the 
Church is to harmonise the profession and practice of its 
members, and generally to spiritualise secular life by the 
education of public opinion. Before, however, Christians 
can hope to make a profound impression upon the outside 
world, it is not unnatural to expect that they should ex- 
hibit a spirit of concord among themselves, seeking to heal 
the unhappy schisms by which the Church is rent. But 
while our separations are deplorable—and we ought not to 
cease our endeavour for the reunion of Christendom—we 
must not forget that there may be harmony of spirit even 
amid diversity of operation, and that where there is true 
brotherly sympathy between Christians, there already is 
essential unity.} 

(3) The special work of the Church to which it is con- 
strained by the express terms of its Master’s commission, 
is to preach the Gospel to every creature and to bring all 
men into obedience to Christ. A distinction is commonly 
made between Home and Foreign Missions. While the 
distinction is useful, it is scarcely valid. The work 
of the Church at home and abroad is one. The claims 
of the ignorant and hapless of our own land do not exempt 
us from responsibilities to the heathen world. The Lord’s 
Prayer for the coming of the Kingdom requires of Christian 
men that they shall consecrate their gifts along every line 
of effort to the fulfilment of the divine will upon the earth. 

3. While all sections of the Church are convinced that 


1 Eph. iv. 3. 


X11. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 239 


an honest application of the principles of Jesus to the 
practical affairs of life would speedily transform society, 
there is considerable diversity of opinion as to the proper 
attitude of Christianity to social problems. ‘The outward 
reconstruction of social order was not, it must be admitted, 
the primary aim of Jesus: it was rather the spiritual re- 
generation of the individual. But such could only become 
a reality as it transformed the entire fabric of life. (1) 
Christ’s teaching could not but affect the organisation of 
industry as well as every other section of the social struc- 
ture. Though Jesus has many warnings as to the perils 
of riches, there is no depreciation of wealth (in its truest 
sense). It is true He refuses to interfere in a dispute 
between two brothers as to worldly property, and repudiates 
generally the office of arbiter. It is true also that He warns 
His disciples against covetousness, and lays down the 
principle that ‘a man’s life consisteth not in the abund- 
ance of the things which he possesseth.’ But these sayings, 
so far from implying disapproval of earthly possessions, 
imply rather that property and trading are the indis- 
pensable basis upon which the outward fabric of the social 
order is built. Christ does not counsel withdrawal from 
the activities of the world. He honours work. He re- 
cognises the legitimacy of trading. Many of His parables 
would have no meaning if His attitude to the industrial 
system of His day had been one of uncompromising hos- 
tility. He has no grudge against riches in themselves. In 
the parable of the talents it is the comparatively poor man 
who is censured while the rich iscommended. To sum up 
what Jesus thought about wealth is not easy. Many have 
thought that He condemned the holding of property alto- 
gether. But such a conclusion cannot be drawn from His 
teaching. Possessions, both outward and inward, are 
rather to be brought to the test of His judgment. His 
influence would rather bring property and commerce under 
the control of righteousness and brotherhood. His ideal 
of life is to be attained through learning the right use of 
wealth rather than through the abolition of it. Wealth 


240 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


can be used for the kingdom of God, and it is a necessary 
instrument in the Church’s work. It may be consecrated 
like every other gift to the service of Christ. But there 
are mighty forces enlisted against its best usefulness, and 
only through the fullness of Christian grace can its good work 
be done. What Jesus does condemn however is the pre- 
datory instinct, that greed of gain which embodies itself 
everywhere in the spirit of plunder, exploitation, and the 
impulse to gambling. He can have nothing but condem- 
nation for that great wave of money-love which has swept 
over Christendom in our time, affecting all classes. It has 
fostered self-indulgence, stimulated depraved appetites, 
corrupted business and politics, oppressed the poor, 
materialised our ideals, and weakened religious influences. 
‘From this craze of the love of money the voice of Jesus 
calls the people back to the sane life in Ethics and religion 
in which He is leader.’! What then ought to be the 
attitude of the Church to the industrial questions of our 
day ? While some contend that the social question is 
really a religious question, and that the Church is untrue 
to its mission when it holds itself aloof from the economical 
problems which are agitating men’s minds, others view 
with suspicion, if not with hostility, the deflection of re- 
ligion from its traditional path of worship, and deem it a 
mistake for the Church to interfere in industrial movements. 

A recent writer ? narrates that in his boyhood he actually 
heard an old minister of the Church of Scotland declare 
in the General Assembly, ‘We are not here to make the 
world better: we have only to pass through it on the way 
to glory.’ ‘No grosser travesty,’ adds the author, ‘ was 
ever uttered. Weare here to make the world better. We 
have a commission to stamp out evil and to prevent men 
from falling into it. If this is not Christian work, what 
is?’ 

At the same time a portion of the clergy have gone 
to the opposite extreme, identifying the kingdom of God 
with social propaganda, and thus losing sight of its spiritual 


1 Clarke, /deal of Jesus, p. 258. 2 Watson, Social Advance. 


XIII. J SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 241 


and eternal, as well as its personal, significance. There has 
been moreover a tendency on the part of some to associate 
themselves with a political party, and to claim for the 
Church the office of judge and arbitrator in industrial 
strife. But surely it is one thing to degrade the Church 
to the level of a secular society, and another, by witness 
and by effort, to make the law of Christ dominant over all 
the relationships of life. Men are impatiently asking, 
‘Has the Church no message to the new demands of the 
age? Are Christians to stand apart from the coming 
battle, and preach only the great salvation to individual 
souls? Jhat the Christian minister must never cease to-\ 
do; but the Gospel, if it is to meet the needs of men, must ) 
be read in the light of history and experience, and inter- | 
preted by the signs of the times. 

(2) The ground idea of Jesus’ teaching was, as Troeltsch 
has pointed out,! the declaration of the kingdom of God. 
Everything indeed is relative to union with God, but in 
God man’s earthly life is involved. ‘Two notes were there- 
fore struck by Jesus, a note of individualism and a note 
of universalism—love to God and love to man. These 
notes do not really conflict, but they became the two 
opposite voices of the Church, and gave rise to different 
ethical tendencies. The first religious communities con- 
sisted of the poor and the enslaved. It never occurred to 
them that they had civic rights: all they desired was 
freedom to worship Christ. Not how to transform the 
social world, but how to maintain their own religious faith 
without molestation in the world of unbelief and evil was 
their problem. 

(3) In the early Catholic Church the spirit of individual- 
ism ruled. With the Reformation a new type of life was 
developed, and a new attitude to the social world was 
established. But while Lutheranism sought to exercise 
its influence upon social life through state regulation, 
Calvinism was more individualistic, and sought rather to 


1 Die Soziallehren der Christlichen Kirchen und Gruppen, a recent work 
on social ethics of great erudition and importance. 


242 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [cH. 


enforce its teaching by means of the personal life. The 
attitude of the various sects—Baptists, Pietists, Puritans 
—has been largely individualistic, and instead of en- 
deavouring to rectify the abuses of industrial life they have 
been disposed rather to suffer the ills of this evil world, 
finding in faith alone their compensation and solace. 

In modern times the tendency of the Church, Romanist 
and Protestant alike, has been toward social regeneration ; 
and a form of Christian Socialism has even appeared which 
however lacks unity of principle and uniformity of action. 
The medieval idea of a Holy Roman Empire, in which all 
nations and classes were to be consolidated, is now ad- 
mitted to be a dream incapable of realisation, partly 
because the idea itself is illusory, but principally because 
the hold of the Papacy upon the people has been weakened. 
The agitation, ‘Los von Rom’ on the one hand, and the 
‘Modernist’ movement on the other, have tended to 
dissipate the unity and energy of Catholicism. Neverthe- 
less the Church, which is really the society of Christian 
people, is coming to see that it cannot close its eyes to 
questions which concern the daily life of man, nor hold 
aloof from efforts which are working for the social better- 
ment of the world. To bring in the kingdom of God is 
the Church’s work, and it is becoming increasingly evident 
that the kingdom, if it is to come in any real and living 
sense, must come where Jesus Himself founded it—upon 
the plane of this present life. 

There are two considerations which make this work on 
the part of the Church at once imperative and hopeful. 
The first is that the Church is specially called upon by the 
command and example of its Founder to range itself on the 
side of the weak and helpless. It is commanded to bring 
the principles of brotherly love to bear upon the con- 
ditions of life which press most heavily upon the handi- 
capped. It is called on in the spirit of its Master to rebuke 
the greed of gain and the callous selfishness which uses the 
toil, and even the degradation of others, for its own per- 
sonal enjoyment. The Church only fulfils its function when 


x1. ] SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS 243 


it is not only the consoler of the suffering but also the 
champion of the oppressed. And the other consideration 
is that in virtue of its nature and charter the Church is 
enabled to appeal to motives which the State cannot supply. 
It brings all social obligation under the comprehensive law 
of love. It exalts the principle of brotherhood. It lifts 
up the sacrifice of Christ, and seeks to make it potent over 
the hearts of men. It preaches the doctrine of humanity, 
and strives to win a response in all who are willing to 
acknowledge their common kinship and equality before 
God. It appeals to masters and servants, to employers 
and labourers, to rich and poor, and bids them remember 
that they are sharers alike of the Divine Mercy, pensioners 
eee upon their Heavenly Father’s love. 

. Whatever shape the obligation of the Church may take 
in sale to the social problems of the homeland, the duty 
of Christianity to the larger world of Humanity admits of 
no question. The ethical significance of the missionary 
movement of last century has been pronounced by Wundt,} 
the distinguished historian of morals, as the mightiest 
factor in modern civilisation. Speaking of humanity in 
its highest sense as having been brought into the world by 
Christianity, he mentions as its first manifestation the care 
of the sick, and then adds, ‘ the second great expression of 
Christian humanity is the establishment of missions.’ It 
is unnecessary to dwell upon this modern form of unselfish 
enthusiasm. It has its roots in the simple necessity, on 
the part of the morally awakened, of sharing their best with 
other people. ‘Man grows with the greatness of his pur- 
poses, and no greater ideal task has ever presented itself 
to the imagination of man than this mighty attempt to 
conquer the world for Christ, and give to his brother men 
throughout the earth that which has raised and enriched 
himself.? 

‘The two great forming agencies in the world’s history,’ 
says a prominent political economist, ‘have been the re- 


1 Hthik, vol. ii. 
2 King, The Moral and Religious Challenge of our Times, pp. 44 and 346. 


244 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


ligious and the economic.’! On the one hand the 
economic is required as the basis of civilisation, but on the 
other the supreme factor is religion. The commercial im- 
pulse, carried on independently of any higher motive than 
self-interest, has however not infrequently reacted favour- 
ably on the moral life of the race. Mutual understanding, 
the sense of a common humanity, the virtues of honesty, 
fairness, and confidence upon which all legitimate commerce 
is founded, have paved the way in no small degree for the 
message of brotherhood and mercy. The present hour is 
the Church’s opportunity. Already the world has been 
opened up, the nations of the earth are awakening to the 
greatness of life’s possibilities. The danger is that the 
Oriental peoples should become satisfied with the mere 
externals of civilisation, and miss that which will assure 
their complete emancipation. Christianity was born 
in the East, though it has become the inheritance of the 
West. It is adapted by its genius to all men. And un- 
doubtedly the West has no better boon to confer on the 
East than that on which its own life and hope are founded 
—the religion of Jesus Christ. If we do not give that, we 
are unfaithful to our Master’s call; we falsify our own 
history, and wholly miss the purpose for which we have 
been entrusted with divine enlightenment and power. 


1 Marshall, Principles of Economics, 


xiv.) CONCLUSION 24d 


CHAPTER XIV 
CONCLUSION—THE PERMANENCE OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS 


IN bringing to a close our study of Christian Ethics, we 
repeat that the three dominant notes of the Christian Ideal 
are—Absoluteness, Inwardness, and Universality. The 
Gospel claims to be supreme in life and morals. The 
uniqueness and originality of the Ethics of Christianity are 
to be sought, however, not so much in the range of its 
practical application as in the unfolding of an ideal which 
is at once the power and pattern of the new life. That 
ideal is Christ in whom the perfect life is disclosed, and 
through whom the power for its realisation is communicated. 
Life is a force, and character a growth arising in and ex- 
panding from a hidden seed. Hence in Christian Ethics 
apathy and passivity, and even asceticism and quietism, 
which occupy an important place in the moral systems of 
Buddha and Neo-Platonism, in medizval Catholicism and 
the teaching of Tolstoy, play only a subsidiary part, and 
are but preparatory stages towards the realisation of a 
fuller life. On the contrary all is life, energy, and un- 
ceasing endeavour. ‘I am come that ye may have life, 
and that ye may have it more abundantly.’ 

There is no finality in Christian Ethics. It is not a 
mechanical and completed code. The Ethic of the New 
Testament, just because it has its spring in the living 
Christ, is an inexhaustible fountain of life. ‘True Chris- 
tianity,’ says Edward Caird, ‘is not something which was 
published in Palestine, and which has been handed down 
by a dead tradition ever since; it is a living and growing 


246 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS [CH. 


spirit, and learns the lessons of history, and is ever mani- 
festing new powers and leading on to new truths.’ 

The teaching of Jesus is not merely temporary or local. 
It is an utter perversion of the Gospels to make the eschat- 
ology present in them the master-key to their meaning, or 
to derive the ethical ideal from the utterances which antici- 
pate an abrupt and immediate end. Jesus spoke indeed 
the language of His time and race, and often clothed His 
spiritual purpose in the form of national expectation. But 
to base His moral maxims on an ‘ Interim-Ethic ’ adapted 
to a transitory world is to ‘ distort the perspective of His 
teaching, and to rob it of its unity and insight.’ On the 
contrary, the Ethics of Jesus are everywhere characterised 
by adaptability, universality, and permanence, and in His 
attitude to the great problems of life there is a serenity and 
sympathy which has nothing in common with the nervous 
and excited expectation of sudden catastrophe. 

In like manner it is a misinterpretation of the teaching 
of Jesus to represent asceticism as the last word of Christian 
Ethics. Renunciation and unworldliness are undoubtedly 
frequently commended in the New Testament, but they 
are urged not as ends in themselves but as means to a 
fuller self-realisation. Such was not the habitual temper 
and tone of Jesus in His relations to the world, nor was 
the ultimate purpose of His mission to create a type of 
manhood whose perfection lay in withdrawal from the 
interests and obligations of life. ‘To single out a teaching 
of non-resistance as the core of the Gospels, to retreat from 
social obligations in the name of one who gladly shared 
them and was called a friend of wine-bibbers and publicans 
—all this, however heroic it may be, is not only an im- 
practicable discipleship but a historical perversion. It 
mistakes the occasionalism of the Gospels for universalism.’! 

Finally, there are many details of modern social well- 
being with which the New Testament does not deal, 
questions of present-day ethics and economics which 
cannot be decided by a direct reference to chapter and 


1 Prof. Peabody, Harvard Theological Review, May 1913. 


XIv.] CONCLUSION 247 


verse, either of the Gospels or Epistles. The problems of 
life shift with the shifting years, but the nature of life 
remains unchanged, and responds to the life and the spirit 
of Him who was, and remains down the ages, the Light of 
men. ‘The individual virtues of humility, purity of heart, 
and self-sacrifice are not evanescent, but are now and 
always the pillars of Christian Ethics; while the great 
principles of human solidarity, of brotherhood and equality 
in Christ, of freedom, of love, and service ; the New Testa- 
ment teachings concerning the family, the State, and the 
kingdom of God; our Lord’s precepts with regard to the 
sacredness of the body and the soul, the duty of work, the 
stewardship of wealth, and the accountability to God for 
life with its variety of gifts and tasks—contain the germ 
and potency of all personal and social transformation and 
renewal. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


A.—GENERAL WORKS ON ETHICS 
I. ENGLISH WORKS 


1. Early Idealism and Intuitionalism. 


Hobbes, 1650; Mandeville, 1714; Cudworth, 1688; Cumber- 
land, 1672; Sam. Clarke, 1704; Shaftesbury, 1713; Butler, 1729; 
Hutchison, 1755; Adam Smith, 1759; R. Price, 1757; Thom. 
Reid, 1793 ; Dugald Stewart, 1793 ; W. Whewell, 1848 ; H. Calder- 
wood, Handbook of Mor. Phil., 1872; Martineau, Types of Ethical 
Theory, 1886; Laurie, Hihics, 1885; N. Porter, Hlements of Moral 
Science, 1885. . 


2. Utilitarianism. 


Locke, Concerning Human Understanding, 1690; Hartley, 
Observations on Man, 1748; Hume, Enquiry Concerning Principles 
of Morals, 1751; Hssays, 1742; Paley, Principles of Mor. and 
Political Phil., 1785; Bentham, Introd. to Principles of Morals and 
Legislation, 1789; Jas. Mill, Analysis of the Human Mind, 1829 ; 
J.S. Mill, Utuletarianism, 1863; A. Bain, Mental and Moral Science, 
1868; Mind and Body, 1876; H. Sidgwick, Methods of Ethics (6th 
ed.), 1901; Shadworth Hodgson, Theory of Practice, 1870; T. Fowler, 
Progressive Morality, 1884; Grote, Hxamination of Utilitarian Ethics, 
1870. 


3. Hvolutionary Ethics. 


Chas. Darwin, Descent of Man, 1871; Herbert Spencer, Principles 
of Ethics and Data of Hihics, 1879; W. K. Clifford, Lectures and 
Essays, 1879 ; Leslie Stephen, Science of Ethics, 1882 ; S. Alexander, 
Moral Order and Progress, 1889; Shurman, Ethical Import of 
Darwinism; Huxley, Evolution and Hihics; Hobhouse, Morals in 
Evolution (2 vols.), 1906; Westermarck, Origin and Development of 
the Moral Ideas, 1909. 

248 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 


4. Modern Idealism. 


T. H. Green, Proleg. to Ethics, 1883; F. H. Bradley, Ethical 
Studies, 1876; Appearance and Reality, 1893; E. Caird, Crit. 
Phil. of Kant, 1890; Evolution of Religion, 1903; W. R. Sorley, 
Kthics of Naturalism, 1885; Recent Tendencies in Ethics, 1904; The 
Moral Infe, 1912; W. L. Courtney, Constructive Ethics, 1886; J.S. 
Mackenzie, Introd. to Social Philos., 1890; Manual of Ethics 
(4th ed.), 1900; W. Wallace, Lectures and Essays, 1898 ; Muirhead, 
Elements of Ethics, 1892; Rashdall, Theory of Good and Evil; 
Boyce Gibson, A Philos. Introd. to Ethics, 1904; Ward, Kingdom 
of Ends (Gifford Lect.), 1910; Bosanquet, Principles of Indt- 
viduality and Value, 1912; Value and Destiny of the Individual 
(Gifford Lects.), 1913; Psychology of the Moral Self; D’Arcy, 
Short Study of Ethics; W. Arthur, Physical and Moral Law; Jas. 
Seth, Study of Ethical Principles (11th ed.), 1910; Ryland, Manual 
of Hthics; G. E. Moore, Principia Hthica, 1903; Hthics (Home 
Univ. Lib.), 1912; MacCunn, Making of Character, 1905; Ethics 
of Citizenship, 1907 ; Six Radical Thinkers, 1907 ; Bowne, Principles 
of Ethics; Immanence of God, 1906; Dewey, Outlines of a Crit. 
Theory of Ethics, 1891; Harris, Moral Evolution; Hyslop, Elements 
of Ethics, 1895; Mezes, Ethics, Descriptive and Explanatory, 1901 ; 
Royce, Religious Aspects of Philosophy; Philosophy of Loyalty, 
1908; Taylor, Problem of Conduct; Rand, The Classical Moralsts 
(Selections), 1910. 


Il. FOREIGN WORKS 


Kant’s works, specially Metaphysics of Ethics, trans. by T. 
K. Abbott, under title, Kant’s Theory of Ethics (3rd ed.), 1883; 
Fichte, Science of Ethics (trans.), 1907; Science of Rights (trans.) ; 
Popular Works (2 vols.); Vocation of Man, etc. ; Hegel, Philosophy 
of Right, trans. by 8. W. Dyde, 1896; Lotze, Practical Philosophy, 
1890; Paulsen, System of Ethics, trans. by Tufts; Wundt, Ethics, 
An Investigation of the Facts and Laws of the Moral Ife (3 vols.), 
trans. from 2nd German ed., 1892; Dubois, The Culture of Justice ; 
Guyot, La Morale; Janet, Theory of Morals (trans.); Nietzsche’s 
Works, translated by Oscar Levy (18 vols.); Eucken, The Problem 
of Human Lafe, 1912; Life's Basis and Life’s Ideal, 1912; Meaning 
and Value of Life, 1912; Main Current of Modern Thought, 1912 ; 
The Life of the Spirit, 1909 ; Hensel, Hauptproblem der Hihik, 1903 ; 
Lipps, Die Lthischen Grundfragen, 1899 ; Natorp, Social-paedagogtk ; 
Schuppe, Grundziige der Ethik; Wentscher, Hihik; Schwarz, Das 
Sittliche Leben; L. Levy-Bruhl, Hthics and Moral Science, trans. by 
Eliz. Lee, 1905; Windelband, Prdludien. tiber Willensfreiheit ; 
Bauch, Gliickseligkeit und Persénlichkeit in der krit. Ethik; Sitt- 


250 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


lichkeit und Kultur; Cohen, Ethik des Reinen Willens, 1904; Dilthey, 
Einleitung in die Geisteswissenschaften ; Ihering, Der Zweck im Recht 
(2 Bde.), 1886; Cathrein, Moral. Philosophie (2 Bde.), 1904; Tonnies, 
Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft, 1887. 


B.—CHRISTIAN ETHICS 
I. GENERAL 


Harless, Christl. Hthik, 1842 (trans.), 1868; Schleiermacher, 
Die Christl. Sitte, 1843 ; Marheineke, System d. Chrisil. Moral, 1847 ; 
Rothe, Theol. Ethik, 1845; De Wette, Lehrbuch d. Christl. Sitten- 
lehre, 1853; Ch. F. Schmid, Christl. Sittenlehre, 1861; A. Wuttke, 
Handbuch d. Chrisil. Sittenlehre, 1861 (trans., 2 vols., J. P. Lacroix, 
1873); F. P. Cobbe, Religious Duty, 1864; Studies Ethical and 
Social, 1865; Seeley, Hcce Homo, 1886; Maurice, Social Morality, 
1872; Conscience, 1872; Wace, Christianity and Morality, 1876; 
Hofmann, Theol. Hthik, 1878; Lange, Grundriss d. Christl. Hthik, 
1878; Martensen, Chrisil. Hihik (trans., 3 vols.), 1878; Gregory 
Smith, Characteristics of Christian Morality, 1876; O. Pfleiderer, 
Grundriss d. Glaubens und Sitienlehre, 1880; Luthardt, Vortrage 
uiber die Moral d. Christenthums, 1882; S. Leathes, Foundations of 
Morality, 1882; Frank, System d. Christl. Sittenlehre, 1885; West- 
cott, Social Aspects of Christianity, 1887; W. T. Davidson, The 
Christian Conscience, 1888; Balfour, The Religion of Humanity, 
1888 ; Maccoll, Christianity in Relation to Science and Morals, 1889; 
Stanton, Province of Christian Ethics, 1890; Hughes, Principles of 
Natural and Supernatural Morals, 1890; W. G. Lilly, Right and 
Wrong, 1890; Bright, Morality in Doctrine, 1892; Schultz, Grund- 
riss d. Hvangelischen Ethik, 1891; Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 
1892; Dowden, Relation of Christian Hihics to Philos. Ethics, 
1892; Jas. Drummond, Via, Veritas, Vita (Hib. Lect.), 1894; 
Jacoby, Neutestamentliche Hihik, 1889; Salwitz, Das Problem d. 
Hilik, 1891; Knight, The Christian Ethic, 1893; Jas. Kidd, 
Morality and Religion, 1895; Strong, Christian Ethics, 1897; 
Troeltsch, Die Christl. Hthik und die heutige Gesellschaft, 1904 ; 
Die Sociallehren d. Christl. Kirchen u. Gruppen (2 vols.), 1912; 
Protestantism and Progress, 1912; Lemme, Christl. Hthik. (2 vols.), 
1908; Kirn, Grundriss d. Theol. Hthik, 1909; WSittliche Lebenan- 
schauungen d. Gegenwart, 1911; Nash, LHihics and Revelation; 
Dobschiitz, The Christian Life in the Primitive Church; Clark, The 
Church and the Changing Order; Ottley, Christian Ideas and Ideals, 
1909; Clark Murray, Handbook of Christian Ethics, 1908; Henry 
W. Clark, The Christian Method of Hihics, 1908; Rauschenbusch, 
Christianity and the Social Crisis, 1908 ; Geo. Matheson, Landmarks 
of New Testament Morality, 1888; J. Smith, Christian Character 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 251 


and Social Power; Gladden, Applied Christianity; J. R. Campbell, 
Christianity and the Social Order ; Coe, Education in Religion and 
Morals; Peile, The Reproach of the Gospel; Gottschick, Ethik, 1907 ; 
W. Schmidt, Der Kampf um die Sittliche Welt, 1906; Herrmann, 
Ethik, 1909; Faith and Morals, Communion of the Christian with 
God; A. E. Balch, Introduction to the Study of Christian Ethics ; 
Kirkpatrick, Christian Character and Conduct; Church, Outlines of 
Christian Character ; Paget, Christian Character ; Illingworth, Chris- 
tian Character; Personality, Human and Divine; R. Mackintosh, 
Christian Ethics, 1909; Haering, The Ethics of the Christian Life 
(trans.), 1909; Barbour, A Philos. Study of Christian Ethics, 
1911; Stubbs, Christ and Economics; W. 8. Bruce, Social Aspects 
of Christian Morality, 1905; Formation of Christian Character ; 
‘Harper, Christian Ethics and Social Progress, 1912; T. C. Hall, 
Social Solutions in the Light of Christian EHthics, 1911. 


ti. SPECIAL SUBJECTS 


1. Ethics of Jesus. 


Briggs, Ethical Teaching of Jesus; P. Brooks, Influence of Jesus ; 
Dale, Laws of Christ for Common Infe; Feddersen, Jesus und die 
Socialen Dinge; Gardner, Hxploratio Evangelica; Ehrhardt, Der 
Grundcharacter d. Ethik Jesu, 1895; Grimm, Die Ethik Jesu, 1903 ; 
Peabody, Jesus Christ and the Christian Character, 1905; Jesus 
Christ and the Social Question, 1902; The Approach to the Social 
Question, 1909 ; King, The Ethics of Jesus, 1910; Moral and Social 
Challenge of our Times, 1912; Rau, Die Hthik Jesu; Stalker, Imago 
Christi, 1888; The Ethic of Jesus, 1909; Mathews, Z'he Social 
Teaching of Jesus; Horton, The Commandments of Jesus; W. N. 
Clarke, The Ideal of Jesus, 1911. 


2. Teaching of Jesus and Aposiles. 


Works of A. B. Bruce; Gilbert, Revelation of Jesus; Harnack, 
What is Christianity ? (Das Wesen); Sayings of Jesus; Jiilicher, 
Gleichnissreden Jesu; Denney, Jesus and the Gospel, 1909 ; Latham, 
Pastor Pastorum ; Moorhouse, Pullan, Ross, Von Schrenck, Stevens, 
Swete; Tolstoy, My Religion; Wendt, Lehre Jesu (2 ed.), 1901 ; 
Weizsicker, The Apostolic Age; Hausrath, History of N. T. 
Times; Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Thought; D. La Touche, 
The Person of Christ in Modern Thought, 1911; Pfanmiiller, Jesus 
im Urtheil d. Jahrhunderte ; Bacon, Jesus, the Son of God; Dalman, 
Words of Jesus; Baur, Paulinismus; Bosworth, Teaching of Jesus 
and Apostles; Pfleiderer, Paulinismus; Primitive Christianity ; 
Johan-Weiss, Paul and Jesus; Gardner, Relig. Experience of St. 
Paul; Alexander, Ethics of St. Paul. 


252 CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


C.—HISTORY OF ETHICS 


See Histories of Philosophy: Ueberweg, Erdmann, Windelband, 
Schwegler, Maurice, Rogers; Alexander, A Short History of Philo- 
sophy (2nd ed.), 1908; Lecky, Hist. of Hurop. Morals; Lu- 
thardt, History of Ethics; Rogers, A Short History of Ethics, 1912 ; 
Thoma, Geschichte d. Christl. Sittenlehre in der Zeit d. N. T., 1879; 
Wundt (Vol. II. of Ethics); Wuttke (Vol. I. of Ethics); Sidgwick, 
History of Ethics; Ziegler, Gesch. d. Hthik; Jodl, Gesch. d. Ethik 
in d. Neueren Philosophie: T. C. Hall, History of Ethics within 
Organized Christianity, 1910. See also Relevant Articles in Bible 
Dictionaries, especially Hastings’ Encyclopedia of Religion and 
Ethics. 


INDEX 


Aotivism, 117, 122, 179. 

Adiaphora, 201. 

Astheticism, 15 f., 108. 

Alquin, 2. 

Apocalyptic teaching of Christ, 133. 

Aquinas, Thomas, 2, 196. 

Aristotle, 10, 17 f., 40 f., 66, 70, 87, 
107, 187. 

Arnold, Matthew, 1, 107. 

Asceticism, 129, 150, 192, 245. 

Assimilation to Christ, 179. 

Atonement, 166. 

Augustine, 30, 57 f., 66, 140, 231. 

Aurelius, Marcus, 43, 70. 

Avenarius, 86. 


BatcH, 132, 133. 

Barbour, 41, 185, 157, 159, 161. 

Baur, 39. 

Beatitudes, 129, 136, 188. 

Beneficence, 213. 

Bentham, 103, 204. 

Bergson, 64, 91 f., 117 f. 

Bernard, 218, 

Blewett, Christian view of God, 170. 

Bosanquet, 16, 27, 64, 92, 113, 114. 

Bousset, 134, 135. 

Brotherhood, 145, 210, 243, 247. 

Browning, 3, 16, 60, 63, 77, 119, 131, 
132, 138, 206, 218. 

Bunsen, 69. 

Burckhardt, 227. 

Burke, 204. 

Burkitt, 32. 

Burnet, 41. 

Burns, Robert, 204. 

Butcher, 41. 

Butler, Bishop, 166. 


CaiRD, E., 44, 60, 64, 245. 

— J., 63. 

Cairns, 135. 

Calixtus, G., 2. 

Calvinism, 2, 57, 241. 

Cambridge Platonists, 39. 

Campbell, 69. 

Chamberlain, Houston, 48. 

Character, 6, 10, 14, 15, 24, 186; 
making of, 208. 

Childhood, children, 226 f. 

Christ, 1, 4, 5, 11f., 124; as example, 
146 f. ; character of, 148 f., 150. 

Christianity, 123 f. 

Church, 4, 209, 236 ff. 

Citizenship, 39, 151, 233 f, 

Clarke, 240. 

Clement, 2, 39. 

Coleridge, 3. 

Collectivism, 106. 

Compassion, 212. 

Conduct, 1, 6, 13, 15, 183 f. 

Conscience, 68 f. 

Conversion, 171. 

Courage, 38, 186, 187, 190. 

Cousin, 16. 

Creative Evolution, 117. 

Croce, Benedetto, 117. 

Culture, 16, 99, 108, 130, 148, 156, 
207, 208. 


Damon of Socrates, 69. 
Daneus, 2, 
Dante, 125, 138. 
Darwin, 74. 
David, Psalms, 48 f., 70. 
Davidson, 69, 81. 
Death of Christ, 166. 
253 


254 


Decalogue, 2, 45, 72. 
Deissmann, 162. 

Democracy, 235. 

Denney on Forgiveness, 153. 
Descartes, 204. 

Determinism, 88 f. 

Dewey, Professor, 64. 
Disinterestedness of motive, 156 f. 
Divorce, 224. 

Dobschiitz, 134. 

Dogmatics, 3, 24 f. 

Dorner, 25 f. 

Drew, 31. 

Duty, Duties, 6, 21, 52, 196 ff. 
Dynamic of new life, 164 f. 


‘Ecce Homo,’ 152, 205. 

Ecclesiasticism, 3, 49. 

Economics, 17, 239. 

Ehrhardt, 151. 

Emerson on Example, 151. 

Empire, Roman, 48; ‘ Holy,’ 242. 

Engels, 105. 

Epictetus, 48, 70. 

Epicureans, 42. 

Erinnyes of Auschylus, 69. 

Eschatology, 183 f. 

Eternal life, 131. 

Ethics, Christian, 1f., 5, 6, 10 ff; 
Philos., 22, 35 f., 158 ; permanence 
of, 245. 

— of Israel, 44 ff. 

Eucken, 86, 93, 108, 115, 117, 121 f., 
179, 203, 207, 235. 

Eugenics, 110, 255. 

Euripides, 69. 

Evil, 57 f., 62, 116. 

Evolutionalism, 74 f., 103 f. 

Example, human, 151, 214 f.; of 
Jesus, 140, 222 f. . 

Externalism, 142 f. 


FAIRBAIRN, A. M., 147. 
Faith, 65, 67, 174 f., 

Pauline doct.. 177. 
Faithfulness, 200, 2038, 216, 224, 231. 
Faith healing, 90. 


196, 216; 


CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


Family, 
226. 
Fatherhood of God, 141, 145, 153, 

216. 
Feuerbach, 101. 
Fichte, 65, 112, 204. 
Forgiveness, divine, 153; 
214. 
Forsyth, 224. ° 
‘Foundations,’ 178. 
Frazer, 29, 221. 


220 f.; relationships, 222, 


human, 


GARVIE, 222. 

God, idea of, 26; sovereignty of, 27 ; 
fatherhood of, 27; love of, 28; 
recognition of, 215; obedience to, 
216 ; worship of, 217. 

Godlikeness, 141, 218. 

Goethe, 58, 81, 107, 130, 212, 

Grace, means of, 209. 

Graces, 188. 

Grant, Sir A., on ‘ Mean,’ 185, 

Greece, Ancient, 11, 35. 

Greeks, 16, 28, 69. 

Green, T. H., 18, 75, 77, 
218. 


88, 187, 


HAECKEL, 86, 101. 

Haering, 21, 25, 156, 201. 

Harnack, 176, 205, 228. 

Hebrew, 35, 44. 

Hedonism, 104. 

Hegel, 9, 19, 55, 65, 112 f., 124, 204, 
213, 231. 

Heraclitus, 37. 

Hermann, E., 125. 

Herrmann, 202. 

Hobbes, 57, 102. 

Hobhouse, 221. 

Holiness, 141; of Jesus, 149, 

Hope, 47, 197 f. 

Hiigel, von, 126. 

Hume, 18. 

Hypnotism, 90. 

Hyslop, 14. 


IDEALS, 6, 12; 
Ihering, 221. 


idealism, 107, 127f, 


INDEX 


Immanence of God, 43, 93. 
Immortality, 155. 

Incarnation, 165 f. 
Indeterminism, 88. 
Individualism, 107, 204, 205. 
Inge, 16. 

Intellect and Intuition, 65, 118. 
Intellectualism, 64, 65, 114, 118. 
Intensity of life, 129 f. 
Interimsethik, 134 f., 246. 
Intuitionalism, 72, 

Trenzus, 166. 

Israel, 35, 44, 70. 


Jacosy, 25, 142, 157, 

James, St., 29. 

— W., 56, 64, 65, 89 f., 114 f., 
172. 

Jones, Sir H., 132, 219, 231. 

Judezism, Ethics of, 45. 

Judgment, final, 140; just judg- 
ment, 212. 

Justice, 32, 38, 172, 187 f., 210, 233. 

Justification by faith, 177. 


Kant, 138, 65 f., 74, 111 f., 152, 158, 
162, 185, 204. 

Keim, 151. 

King, 184, 224, 227, 243. 

Kingdom of God, 132 f. 

Kirkup, 105. 

Knight, 36. 


LASSALLE, 232. 

Law, Mosaic, 45 f., 70. 

Lecky, 43, 66, 211, 217. 

Lemme, 25, 79 f. 

Leonardo, 92. 

Lidgett, 27. 

Life, 12, 118; as ideal, 128; as 
vocation, 200; regard for, 207; 
as Godlikeness, 141 ; sacredness of, 
142; Christ as standard of, 147; 
brevity of, 154; ‘eternal,’ 131. 

Lodge, Sir O., 172. 

Lofthouse, 221. 

Logic, 15, 118. 

Lotze, 88. 

Love, supremacy of, 28, 196 f,; 
divine, 144, 153. 


255 
Liitgert, 108. 
MACCABEAN age, 48, 


MacCunn, 203. 
Macdonald, Ramsay, 220, 


‘Mach, 85 f. 


Machiavelli, 70. 

Mackenzie, 13, 14, 19, 

Mackintosh, 26, 199, 

Maemillan, 112. 

Mallock, 232. 

Man, estimate of, 55 ff. ; primitive, 57. 

Mark, St., 32. 

Marriage, 223, 225, 

Marshall, 224. 

Martensen, 25, 

Marx, 105. 

Massachusetts, 
Rights,’ 205. 

Matheson, Geo., 194, 

Mazzini on Rights, 203. 

‘Mean’ of Aristotle, 40, 185. 

Metaphysics, 3, 10, 17 f., 25, 37. 

Meyers, St. Paul, 168, 217, 

Micah, 47. 

Mill, J. S., 32, 1038, 

Millar, Hugh, 56. 

Milton, 58. 

Mission of Jesus, 149. 

Missionary movement, 243. 

Moffatt, 134. 

Morality, 10, 37 f. 

Morals, 24. See Ethics, 

Morris, 92. 

Motives, 6, 10; Christian, 152 f. 

Muirhead, 14. 

Murray, 55, 58. 


‘Declaration of 


| Miiller, Max, 58. 


NatTIVISM, 72. 

Naturalism, 100 ff. 

Nemesis, 69. 

Neo-Platonism, 39 f., 40, 44, 245. 

‘New Ethic,’ 108. 

Nietzsche, 58, 109, 225, 232. 

Nine Foundation Pillars of Schmiedel, 
31. 

Norm, Normative, 12, 146. 

Novalis, 16, 25. 


256 


OBEDIENCE, 178. 

Old Dispensation, 45. 
Origin, 39. 

Orr, J., 142. 

Oswald, 86. 

Ottley, 59, 61, 209, 218. 
‘Ought,’ 12, 21, 80. 


PaINneE, 204. 

Parables of the kingdom, 137. 
Parents, 226. 

Parker, Theodore, 56. 
Pascal, 57, 59. 

Passions, 41, 58, 191. 


Paul, St., 22, 26, 30 f., 48, 47, 57 f, 


66, 70, 77, 94 f., 162, 173, 177. 
Paulsen, 10, 151, 199. 
Peabody, 148, 150, 246. 
Pelagius, 56. 
Penalty, 162. 
Pensées, 59. 
Perfection, spiritual, 27, 141. 
Permissible, 202. 


Personality, 6, 55 f., 61, 112, 113, 122, 


209, 213. 
Pfleiderer, 44. 
Pharisaism, 143. 
Philosophy, 4, 5, 9, 35 f. 
Plato, 18 f., 37 ff., 66, 107, 184, 187. 
Pluralism, 116. 
Poetry of Old Testament, 45 f., 48, 
Politics, 15 f. 
Postulates, 6, 18, 22, 25, 29. 
Power, Rine 164 f. 
Pragmatism, 63, 114 f. 
Prayer, 217. 
Pringle-Pattison, 103. 
Property, 213. 


RASHDALL, 27. 

Realisation of self, 128, 
Reformation, 2, 11, 47. 
Regeneration, 171. 

Regret, 171. 

Renewal, 171. 

Renunciation of Gospel, 156. 
Repentance, 171. 

Response, human, 169. 


CHRISTIANITY AND ETHICS 


Responsibility of man, 29. See Will. 
Resurrection of Christ, 167. 
Revolution, French, 56, 235. 
Rewards, 157 f. 

Richter, Jean Paul, 155. 
Righteousness, 46 f., 52, 142, 192. 
Risen life, 167. 

Ritschlian school, 63, 90. 
Romanticism, 107. 

Rome, 35; Romanist, 243. 
Rousseau, 56 f., 100. 

Ruskin, 16, 


SABATIER, 66. 

Sacrifice of Christ, 166; self, 131, 
191, 194, 209. 

Sanday, Professor, 189, 157. 

Schelling, 65. 

Schiller, 16, 107. 

Schleiermacher, 3, 25, 39, 201. 

Schmidt, 86. 

Schmiedel, 31. 

Schopenhauer, 109. 

Schultz on copying Christ, 152. 

Schweitzer, 134. 

Science, 138 f., 83. 

Scott, E., 184, 140. 

Seeley, 16. 

Self-regard, 207. 

Self-restraint of Jesus, 150. 

Self-sufficiency, 130. 

Seneca, 438, 70. 

Sermon on (the) Mount, 32. 

Seth, Jas., 103. 

Sin, 28 f., 140. 

Sinlessness of Jesus, 149. 

Smith, Adam, 103. 

Smyth, Newman, 17, 26, 132. 

Socialism, 105; social problems, 
225 f., 239. 

Society. Social institutions, 220 ff. 

Socrates, 9, 36 f., 39, 69, 186. 

Sonship, 153. 

Sophists, 11, 36, 37. 

Sophocles, 69. 

Soul, 61, 119. 

Sovereignty of God, 27, 93, 144. 

Specialisation, 207. 





INDEX 


Spencer, 74 f., 103, 232. 
Spinoza, 18, 

Sport, 207. 

Stalker, 176, 224. 

Standard of New Life, 146 f. 
State, 229 ff. 

Stephen, Leslie, 17. 

Stoics, 42, 56, 70, 185, 194. 
Strauss, 151. 
Strong, 193. 
Sudermann, 110. 
Suffering, 202, 208. 
Summum bonum, 11. 
Symonds, 69. 
Sympathy of Jesus, 149, 
Synoptic Gospels, 33. 


See Ideal. 


Tasso, 81. 

Temperance, 38, 187, 191. 
Temptation, 208. 

Tennyson, 3, 39; wages, 161. 


Testament, New, 26, 30 f., 35, 57, 71. 


— Old, 26, 45. 
Thanksgiving, 218. 
Theologia Moralis, 2, 
Titius, 134. 

Touche, E. D. La, 145, 


257 


Troeltsch, 135, 151, 241. 
Truthfulness, 211. 


UTILITARIANISM, 103 f., 114 


VIRTUE. Virtues, 69, 21, 38 ff., 183 ff. 
Vitalism, 117, 120. 
Vocation, 154, 199 f. 


WaasEs, 161. 

Watson, 240. 

Wealth, 239. 

Weiss, Johannus, 134, 170. 
Welt-Anschauung, 19, 31. 
Wenley, 44. 

Wernle, 58, 134. 

Westcott, Bishop, 39, 
Westermarck, 221. 

Will, 12 ff., 82 f. 

Wisdom, 38, 43, 49, 187, 192. 
Wordsworth, 3, 39. 

Work, 208, 289. 

Worship, 217, 237. 

Wundt, 73, 78 f., 186, 218, 243. 
Wuttke, 13, 25, 217. 





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